Throw Down Your Heart
Last weekend I went to a screening that was part of the Vancouver International Film Festival. I try and go to one or two of these every year, and part of the fun of a film festival is that, unless you’re really tuned in to the scene and know about all the hot young documentarians and envelope-pushing indie filmmakers, it’s a gamble. One never quite knows what to expect.
I, and anyone else that saw it, hit the jackpot with Throw Down Your Heart. It’s a documentary that follows the world’s premiere virtuoso banjo player, Bela Fleck, as he travels around Africa (the “birthplace” of the banjo) meeting musicians, learning their music, and playing it with them. If you aren’t familiar with Bela Fleck, I will direct you here and here. Suffice it to say that he has won 4 Grammy Awards and has been nominated for 9 others. He has been nominated for Grammies in more categories than any other musician, and the reason why is what makes this documentary so amazing.
I’ll explain. Much of the “jam session” sequences begin with Bela showing up in a small village or someone’s home, meeting the people there, getting out his banjo, and then listening as his hosts begin to make incredible music in whatever the traditional style is of their culture, be it on a rudimentary 3-stringed banjo predecessor, a guitar, or an ensemble of huge marimbas resting over resonating pits dug in the earth. Bela is sometimes seen transcribing melodies or other ideas for himself, and then gradually he begins to play along. As someone who has voraciously mastered many genres, most not originally intended for the banjo, it is not long before Fleck has absorbed enough of the music he’s hearing to then harmonize, add countermelodies, play around with polyrhythms, reharmonize, maybe step out for a solo, maybe hold back in a supporting role. From phrase to phrase we hear interchangeably hints of bluegrass, jazz, classical, and the more unfamiliar African musics that he is presumably just learning himself. He is so good at all of these things that I never felt like he was ruining anything. What he played was different from his companions, and maybe didn’t always blend, but it was somehow always complementary. I think this is because throughout the film we get to know Bela Fleck a little bit, and find him to be shy but friendly, polite but curious, and unceasingly humble and respectful to the people and musicians he meets.
It is slightly reductive to call this film a Buena Vista Social Club with banjo instead of guitar and in Africa instead of Cuba, but I would welcome that description if it helps it to reach the popularity of the former. If you can see it in a theatre somewhere, go. When it comes out on DVD, go get it. When the accompanying album comes out, buy it. In the meantime, the film has a great website where you can hear some of the music and learn more about it.
