- BELA FLECK: THROW DOWN YOUR HEART (DVD MOVIE)
Studio: New Video Group Release Date: 11/03/2009Béla Fleck has spent most of his career moving the banjo into the future–i.e., away from what he calls “the white southern stereotype” and, with the help of his band the Flecktones, into genres not normally associated with the instrument–but with Throw Down Your Heart, he goes in the opposite direction, traveling to Africa to explore the banjo’s ancient roots. Joined by documentary filmmaker Sascha Paladino, Fleck journeys to Uganda, Tanzania, Gambia, and Mali, where he jams with (and records) a variety of musicians (most of whom, ironically, have never so much as seen a banjo before), and the results are consistently lilting and joyous. In the Ugandan village of Nakisenyi, Fleck accompanies several locals playing a gigantic marimba as others sing, clap, and play wood blocks. In a small Tanzanian town, he sits in with some folks playing the kalimba, or thumb piano, while in Dar es Salaam, that country’s largest city, he guests with an electric band with a kind of Afro-Cuban sound. In Gambia he jams with a fellow who plays a long-necked, three-stringed instrument called the akonting, a distant relative of the banjo, and in Mali he meets singer Oumou Sangare, one of the country’s biggest stars. Fleck is appropriately deferential in all instances, and the interaction between the musicians is natural and intuitive; the Africans may be blown away by his virtuoso technique, but they are no slouches themselves, so these are meetings between equals. There are occasional glances at other aspects of African culture and history (such as the Tanzanian slave trade), but the music’s the thing, and if the main program doesn’t satisfy one’s hunger for these wonderfully infectious sounds, an hour of bonus scenes and performances surely will. Fleck and Paladino also contribute an audio commentary track. –Sam Graham
Amazon Q&A with Q&A with Béla Fleck and Sascha Paladino, director of Béla Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart
Did you actually play an akonting or another banjo-predecessor while you were in Africa?
BÉLA: Yes I did. And in the extra cuts in the new version of the film, there is some footage.I did better at learning their music on the banjo, though…
Has the trip to Africa affected or influenced your playing style since? For example, did you mimic any of Djelimady Tounkara’s ngoni–inspired technique?
BÉLA: I love the way it has changed my playing and given me some different thoughts to try. I also got a lot out of all the live touring I did with Oumou Sangare, Toumani Diabate and the other great musicians who came over.
Have you kept in touch with any of the African musicians or people you met during filming?
BÉLA: Yes we have, some more than others of course.
Some of the musical moments ended up being pretty intimate; were you expecting that? Were any of the musicians uncomfortable being filmed?
SASCHA: I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew that the music would be amazing, but I didn’t know how the musicians would feel about being filmed. Luckily, they really opened themselves up to us. Part of that had to do with Béla–when he pulled out his banjo and started playing, it put the African musicians at ease even if there were language barriers. Instant connections were formed through the music, and one of my goals with the film was to highlight those connections.
The setup of the story and the interviews are unobtrusive in that they allow the music to do most of the talking. Did you intentionally shy away from some of the documentary precepts for your first feature?
SASCHA: Yes. It was important to me to let the music speak for itself. I wanted to make sure this film wasn’t just a collection of “talking head” interviews. I tried to include just enough of a glimpse into each musician’s life and personality so that it would deepen your experience of their music, but not get bogged down with talking. To me, the film is a musical adventure, with Béla as your guide, that gives you a chance to hang out with and get to know some amazing African musicians. One of the themes that surfaced during the filming was the idea that Westerners are often exposed to the negative things happening in Africa – poverty, AIDS, war, things like that. As Haruna Walusimbi says in the film, that is only a very small bit of what Africa is. As a result, a big part of the film is about shedding light on some very beautiful, joyous things in Africa. One way we did that was by putting the glorious music front and center.
Though most of your previous ventures were in writing, are you going to focus more on directing now that you’ve completed this film?
SASCHA: I plan to continue both writing and directing. I like that writing and directing use different parts of your brain, but that in the end they’re both really about telling good stories.
What made you decide to make this film together?
BÉLA: Sascha had shot a film about Edgar Meyer and me, called Obstinato: Making Music for Two. When he made this movie, I got excited about his talent, especially since he is my younger brother. So he became the obvious and only choice when I decided to go to Africa and realized that it would have to be filmed.
SASCHA: When Béla asked me to work on the film, I had been making short documentaries for a few years, and had worked as a cinematographer on a music film in Africa, so I knew a bit about the challenges and joys of making a movie there. Since Béla is my brother, there was a level of comfort in working together that was a really positive thing for both of us. Béla and I didn’t grow up together (he is 17 years older than me), and working together was a way of getting to know each other better, too.
Would you be interested in going back to Africa, maybe to places you didn’t get a chance to see, and making more music?
BÉLA: Yes, although I experienced so much on this recent trip that there is not a rush to go back immediately. I have some other projects to do right now, and other parts of the world to consider going to.
SASCHA: For sure. There’s so much amazing music in Africa, we really just scratched the surface. There are many, many movies to be made about music in Africa!
Oumou said that Béla was better at communicating with his hands, that is, musically. Were you nonetheless curious or left in the dark about what the lyrics were saying? Haruna Walusimbi’s song about his father was extremely moving; did you grasp the subject matter at the time?
BÉLA: I had no idea what Haruna was singing or why he was crying until afterwards. It makes it very interesting to watch now, knowing what is going to happen.
SASCHA: I had a very deliberate strategy with the use of subtitles. The first couple of songs in the film, there are no subtitles translating the lyrics. This is because I wanted to put the viewer into Béla’s shoes – he didn’t know what the lyrics were saying at the time since they were in a different language, and he was really focused on the music. But as the film goes on you start to get subtitles translating the lyrics, starting with Haruna Walusimbi’s song. The lyrics, dealing with the loss of Haruna’s father, are very meaningful, and they deepen the emotional experience of the scene. So, starting with that scene the viewer is taken out of Béla’s perspective a little bit and given more information than he had at the moment it was filmed.
The music created and recorded seemed so organic to the process, did you expect the trip to be such an overwhelming success?
SASCHA: When we first arrived in Africa at the beginning of the shoot, we had some fears that things weren’t going to turn out the way we had hoped, and we wouldn’t find enough compelling music. But soon we found our groove – and some amazing musicians – and the result was better than we could have imagined.
BÉLA: We were very ambitious, but the trip far exceeded our expectations.
Buy “Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart” For Only $16.34
May 31, 2008
#1
The richness of African music is diluted here by a very talented North American man who arrives with a very loud bluegrass banjo and begins to play along. Perhaps Fleck thinks he is doing these folks a favor. And maybe he did. After all, everyone seems to have enjoyed his presence. But I would have enjoyed the film much more if Fleck had left his banjo in the case and allowed these fascinating musicians to express themselves as they naturally do. And I suspect that the depth and beauty of their music would have come thru far better also.
If one is interested in Bela Fleck’s exotic vacation in Africa, this may be a cute film to watch. But as a statement about African music, or about the rich fusion that can sometimes occur between musicians of diverse cultures I think this did not quite work.
May 31, 2008
#2
Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and now, Bela Fleck demonstrate the healing power of an authentic art form–before use value degenerates into exchange value, to cop a phrase from Marx.
Once said art form–in this case radical folk music–becomes commodified, it is lost to us. Once the artist is seduced he is longer that. Priest becomes pimp–which is the capitalist State in the US in essence.
For that reason Fleck needed to travel to the cradle of civilization, all but abandoned by the “civilized world,” owing to their great distress, and, therefore areas still exist which remain relatively untouched by the corrupt corporate State here at Empire.
The folk music there beats on. Save the rain forests, save the species, save that which heals the dis-eased West.
All three are done for…
stats:
“In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called ‘absolute poverty.’”
“Every year 15 million children die of hunger.”
“The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world’s hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world.” Hunger in Global Economy
“Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion – a majority of humanity – live on less than $1 per day, while the world’s 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world’s people.” UNICEF
“The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.”
“Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.”
“To satisfy the world’s sanitation and food requirements would cost only US$13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.”
“Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger.”
“In Asian, African, and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in absolute poverty–starving. Every year, 15 million children die of hunger.”
1) Google: African children starvation +statistics
2) watch the DVD
3) relax
May 31, 2008
#3
This is a fantastic look at some amazing African musicians interacting with an amazing American musician. At first it seems awkward, partly because Bela is so unassuming. But then the music starts and everyone is equal. It is a very moving tribute to the musicians and their music. It is wonderful to see the admiration and amazement in Bela’s expression when listening to Anania and others. Do not miss the 64 bonus minutes of jams that didn’t make the final cut of the documentary. They alone are worth the price. I highly recommend this DVD if you have any interest in World Music or are a Bela Fleck fan. In a stellar career this may be a defining moment. If I were Bela, I’d worry about what’s next. He is doing a 33 date tour in the US with some of the featured artists. See it if you can.
May 31, 2008
#4
I liked the African music a lot. I’m a banjo player, and have recently become very interested in the African roots of an instrument. So I grabbed this as soon as I saw it on the shelf at my local movie rental place.
The film is very simple; just Bela interacting with other musicians and singers. His somewhat quiet but affable manner fits nicely with his hosts – he doesn’t come across as some fancy rock star at all and really lets the African musicians shine. And it’s those African musicians who really do make the film so special. I was touched by the woman marimba player: they said that “typically the marimba was a male instrument – but that woman is a wizard!”
My one (major) complaint is that there wasn’t very much *information* in the film. The meaning of the phrase “Throw Down Your Heart” was moving, but there was little else. For instance, when in Gambia and showing the instruments being played, it would have been very nice to point out that the musicians were playing in the ‘clawhammer’ style – a style used in Southern US old-time music (the strings are played with the backs of the fingernails), demonstrating nicely that both the instrument and the way it is played have their roots among the African slaves. I also would have a liked a little more info about the instruments themselves, their history and the variety of ways to play them.
I think Bela’s primary interest was simply to *play* the banjo with his African friends, and the film shows that very well.
June 1, 2008
#5
Not as informative as I would have liked. But if you enjoy the CD, u s/enjoy the DVD.