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This report from Lloyd Sachs, writing for the NoDepression.com website (and excerpted here):

One of the great things about the blues is its refusal to have its origins nailed down. It's easy enough to identify the Mississippi Delta as a spawning ground. But as Joe the Ethnomusicologist can attest, it's difficult to say definitively what the blues did or didn't take from Africa — or what parts of Sarah Palin's favorite continent they did or didn't derive from. Ultimately, it's the mystery of the blues that avails it to so many different interpretations.

Which is where Chuck Bernstein comes in. Bernstein is a 68-year-old jazz drummer living and working in San Francisco who has always had a thing for bottleneck blues guitar. Before he dedicated himself to jazz — his Monk's Music Trio, which is celebrating its 10th birthday, is one of the best groups devoted to the songs of Thelonious Monk — Bernstein played in rock and blues bands in the Bay Area.

In the mid-'70s, Bernstein's friend Shelly Manne, the great West Coast jazz drummer, introduced him to the berimbau, a single-string gourd instrument he had brought back from Brazil. Instantly hooked by its exotic, wah-wah-ready sound, Bernstein devoted himself to learning everything he could about it and its ties to the diddley bow, a one-string instrument prominent in the south in the 1800s that itself has ties to the African umakweyana. His goal was not to plug into berimbau tradition, or to become the next Sergio Mendes (whose Brasil '66 he once saw feature the instrument on TV), but to create a personal, American-roots style of a sort that had never been heard before.

Now Bernstein's CMB label is releasing "Delta Berimbau Blues," a quilt-like collection of performances featuring Brazilian, blues, jazz and folk players based in San Francisco. "Delta Berimbau Blues" has a street date of January 27, 2009... so if this kind of exploration tickles your fancy, you can get a preview of the new music with three new videos on YouTube.