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News & ArtsWednesday, August 12, 2009
Music / Film "Like a Rick Steves of the Banjo"
Posted by Lindy West on Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 10:29 AM
Only a couple days left to see Bela Fleck banjo his way through Africa in Throw Down Your Heart. Eric Grandy writes:
Throw Down Your Heart follows American banjo player Bela Fleck as he travels to Africa on a personal mission to take the instrument back to its place of origin (and to dispel the notion that the banjo belongs solely to white rednecks). His journey brings him from Uganda and Tanzania to Gambia and Mali. Along the way he sits in with a variety of African musicians—Ugandan villagers, a Gambian player of a banjo predecessor called an akonting, a griot in Mali—his banjo picking lending just a slight twangy accent to their traditional styles. Fleck comes off as a genial dork, like a Rick Steves of the banjo, and a few scenes mine either chuckles or sentimentality from his sometimes awkward but earnest ambassadorship. The best moments, though, are those in which the cameras and microphones simply capture the music being made by Fleck and these musicians, and the film contains many such moments.
Throw Down Your Heart plays at Northwest Film Forum tonight and tomorrow night at 7 pm.
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