Whether he's thumping and popping at breakneck speed or making the instrument sing, Victor Wooten brings the bass out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

If you wonder how a mere mortal can play like Wooten, consider this: he is now in his early 40s and he's played the bass all his life.

Wooten was 2 years old when his brother Regi handed him a guitar with two strings removed. He was being groomed for The Wooten Brothers Band. By the age of 5 he was ready, playing electric bass and touring California with a group that opened for Curtis Mayfield and War.

To Wooten, who plays Friday at Roberts Wesleyan College, music was one of the languages he grew up with.

"I was learning music and English at the same time and, more importantly, in the same manner," says Wooten by phone from his Nashville home.

"The process that we use to learn English allows us to get really good at it by age 2 or 3. We can improvise - no one has to tell us what to say - and we can jam with the best. The cool thing is we can do all this and academically, we don't know anything about it. We can't read it; we don't know about nouns, verbs and pronouns."

The comparison to music is obvious to him.

"It's a way of expressing ourselves, a way of communicating," he says. "Most musicians agree with that, but it's rare to find a musician who really treats music as a language. We approach it backwards. We want to learn it academically first, and we think once we know the academics we'll be able to play. For me, and others whose families play, we learned it the natural way."

Wooten, who rose to fame with Béla Fleck & The Flecktones, has thought deeply about music and life. He has recently put some of his ideas into a novel, "The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music," which was published by Penguin this week.

It's a well-written, nicely flowing story about a young bassist named Victor trying to hone his craft, get his life together, and make a living in Nashville.

Although the book is obviously based on Wooten's life, it is full of magical situations and mystical characters. One of them, a free spirit named Michael, teaches Victor life lessons through music.

Michael, says Wooten, is based on a real person. But in the book he is a synthesis of Wooten's teachers and an embodiment of all the things Wooten's figured out about music and life. Michael never actually gives Victor answers to his questions.

"I want to make people think," says Wooten. "If you just tell people what it is, the story's over. Life is about change. Because it's always changing, the answers will always change, so in a sense the questions are more important."

A similar spirit pervades "I Saw God," a song on Wooten's excellent new album, "Palmystery." It's a song he was somewhat hesitant to write.

"I stayed away from that kind of song for a while, because when you mention God people think religion, and then they want to fight over who's right, and I don't want any part of that.

"In the song I wanted to give people a broader thing to think about," he says. "Just even having God's voice both male and female - it's going to be a stretch of the imagination for a lot of people, because just about all religions paint this picture of god as a male."

Wooten's album features all four of the other Wooten brothers, other family members, and special guests like Richard Bona and Mike Stern. It also includes four other bassists. While Wooten is soloing at the high end, he believes it's crucial to keep the low end going.

This is in keeping with his belief that the bass is the foundation of music, even if people don't realize it.

"Anyone that builds a house knows he has to build a foundation, and it's got to be the strongest part," says Wooten. "Anyone who knows anything about music recognizes that in the band also. When I come to buy the house, I'm not looking at the foundation, I'm looking at everything on top of it."

In "The Music Lesson" Wooten reveals trade secrets, like how a bassist can help a soloist get a strong ovation.

"As an accompanying musician, you push the soloist along and make them comfortable and then find ways to make the audience pay attention. Sometimes you create a hole, simplify the bass part. Then slowly build back up; you can feel the intensity growing. And suddenly we land - boom! - on beat one and you instinctively feel like applauding."

Wooten has been in the Flecktones for two decades. In recent years he has branched out into his own projects, not all of them musical. He studied animal tracking, and teaches the skill at a bass and nature camp he runs.

He may be among the world's top bassists, but Wooten is more interested in family, nature, and spirituality.

"I don't make the mistake of putting my musical life first," he says. 

Cultural Life Center, Roberts Wesleyan College

Friday, April 4

7:30 p.m. | $12-$22 | 594-6008, roberts.edu