Thursday, November 12, 2009
Bela Brings the Banjo Back to Africa
Throw Down your Heart is the story of Bela Fleck going to Africa with his banjo and having musical encounters. There is something lovely and and irrepressible about Bela Fleck. He has probably gotten more folk to listen to the banjo, certainly more than traditionalists like Earl Scrugg. My first encounter with Fleck was at a zoo concert in the late eighties when harmonica player Howard Levy. Fleck and the Wooten brothers (Victor and Future Man, look them up if you haven't come across them yet) had a solid interconnected sound that fed my jazz and Grateful Dead oriented ears quite well. When Levy quit the group the Flecktones flecked on as a trio, eventually adding the saxophone acrobatics of Jeff Coffin into the mix. It was only much later that I discovered the work he had done in helping revolutionize bluegrass with newgrass with his buddies like Sam Bush and John Cowen with the Newgrass Revival.
If Fleck wasn't so comfortable, sincere and adept at bringing his banjo into diverse musical settings, this film would never have worked. He can play with anyone, it seems. I remember sitting under the big trees at Marymoor Park as he played Never On Sunday with this big Russian with a huge balalaika and no translator in sight. Or there was the time at Red Rocks in 1999 where the Flecktones featured Tuva throat singer Kongar-ool Ondar, the musician featured in the documentary Genghis Blues. So I knew that Bela going to Africa would probably be a pretty rich experience.
The west African connection to the banjo is an obvious link. You don't have to be Alan Lomax to quickly see that the Akonting or the Ngomi are very banjo-like. But Bela and Throw Down your Heart have a larger scope in mind. During the course of this film, he visits both east AFrican countries (Uganda and Tanzania) as well as Gambia and Mali in the west. The result is a surprising amount of musical diversity. In the marimba rich eastern countries his banjo blends in remarkably, especially in exchanges with the kalimba thumb piano and in the west it fits in side by side with its African ancestors.
There is a lot of music on the Documrama DVD of Throw Down your Heart The film itself is a full ninety minutes and they include another hour of extras. The standout African performer is Tanzania's Anania Ngoliga. This blind musician's energy is exceptionally infectious and a kind of joyous musicality seems to flow out of him totally undaunted.
Again, if this wasn't Bela, I'm not sure it wouldn't work. The concept of a white guy bringing the banjo back to Africa is pretty audacious, silly even. But when you see this film you'll be very glad that he made this journey and shared it with the world at Large.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:07 PM
Comments:
Post a Comment