Out of Africa, a guitarist with a singular voice

Establishing one's own sound is often thought to be the final hurdle separating the great jazz musicians from the merely good ones. By that standard, 33-year-old guitarist Lionel Loueke has already achieved greatness.

Loueke, who brings his trio to the BeanTown Jazz Festival this month, grew up in the West African nation of Benin , where at age 17 he began teaching himself to play guitar.

Guitar strings were hard to come by in his village, so he made do as best he could. Once a week he'd soak his strings in vinegar, which he says didn't do much to maintain their sound but at least made them look better. He also once tried using a bicycle brake cable as a replacement string, with disastrous consequences.

``The problem," says Loueke, ``was the tension was so hard that one day it just broke my neck -- the neck of my instrument."

Formal music education followed. He moved to Ivory Coast and studied classical music for three years. Next came a three-year immersion in jazz at the American School of Modern Music in Paris . Then came three more at Berklee College of Music.

``That was even better than Paris," says Loueke, ``because the facilities are bigger and better, and I had a chance to study with some of the best teachers," including his favorite, Mick Goodrick .

The downside to Berklee, however, was that Loueke's attempt to fit in with the school's modernist aesthetic sometimes kept him from finding his own sound.

``One semester," explains Loueke, ``I would sound like John Scofield , because I was checking him out, and the next semester, I'd sound like Pat Metheny . My study at Berklee was great in the sense [that] I learned a lot about harmony and melody. But it wasn't a school for me where they had me doing my own thing."

That came next, at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at the University of Southern California. The institute's artistic director, Terrence Blanchard , told the story at Scullers last winter of how Loueke wowed him and fellow judges Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock at his audition.

Loueke remembers surprising them by asking if he could play an intro to the tune he'd been told to open with, the John Coltrane classic ``Moment's Notice. "

``Coming from Berklee," says Loueke, ``I was, like, `Man, I don't want to be like anybody. I just wanna be myself. Either they like it or they don't.' And I remember that when I finished my audition, they were clapping. Herbie was saying, `Man, what about we forget about the Monk Institute and we go on the road?' "

Loueke completed his Monk Institute studies, but he's in Hancock's group now, having previously put in four years in Blanchard's. He made the switch because Hancock spends less of the year touring than Blanchard does, and Loueke wanted time to concentrate on his trio, which includes Swedish-Italian bassist Massimo Biolcati and Hungarian drummer Ferenc Nemeth .

The group's second album, ``Virgin Forest," due out later this year, includes cameos from Hancock, Cyro Baptista , Gregoire Maret , and Gretchen Parlato . There are also snippets of traditional drumming and singing that Loueke recorded in Benin, which he used as intros to most of his new pieces on the album and reproduces in performance using a loop machine.

Such rhythms, and Loueke's singing, which bears some resemblance to Milton Nascimento 's, contribute heavily to the guitarist's unique sound. But so do such innovations as stuffing paper between his guitar strings and fret board to mimic an African thumb piano, or slapping his instrument's hollow body with his hand and bending the resultant pitches with a Whammy Pedal to approximate talking drums.

That sort of stuff they don't teach in music schools. And Loueke isn't finished seeking it on his own.

``I'm still looking," he says, ``for new sounds and new approaches."