By Michael D. Ayers 13 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Lionel Loueke didn't pick up the guitar until he was 17. Growing up in the West African country of Benin, he was much more immersed in traditional African music, and by age 9, he was skilled on various percussion instruments.

When he finally got his hands on a guitar, his only option was teaching himself by ear, beginning with African pop he would record and transcribe from the radio. "In Africa, it depends on where you live, the way you play guitar," Loueke says. "So I passed the time checking different styles."

Things changed the first time he heard George Benson. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing; I'd never heard any guitar sound like that," Loueke says. "I didn't have the knowledge to understand what he was playing."

So Loueke adapted his technique again, using worn-down batteries in his tape deck to slow the tempo in an attempt to pick out the notes. "I tried to learn like that for many years," he says.

That initial tinkering paid off, leading Loueke to the National Institute of Art on the Ivory Coast, Paris' American School of Modern Music, Boston's Berklee College of Music and then the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

There, he met and was taken under the wing of Terence Blanchard, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. The latter two grace Loueke's Blue Note debut, "Karibu," due March 25.

There are two covers on the set — John Coltrane's "Naima" and the Hoagy Carmichael tune "Skylark." The seven originals blend Loueke's influences into a fresh sound. With faint vocals in his native Swahili, Loueke offers rich, free-form explorations.

Loueke credits Hancock and Shorter with more than just passing on various techniques throughout the last several years.

"I learned so much, musically speaking: the language, the harmony, the vocabulary," Loueke says. "But what I learned mostly is the type of person they are. In how to lead a band, they let you do your thing, without telling you, 'This is not good.' The biggest impact they've had on me isn't musical. It's how humble they are, at that level."

Loueke, who will have an opening slot on Hancock's summer North American tour, looks forward to further experimental work as a performer and recording artist. "For me, that's the direction I want to take in the future," he says. "I'm hoping one day to have a CD where everything is clean, dark and abstract."

Reuters/Billboard