Karina on SpoutBlog

The neatest formal trick in Throw Down Your Heart, Sascha Paladino’s somewhat overlong but surprisingly moving document of his brother Bela Fleck’s journey to Africa to sort out the roots of the banjo and record an album with native musicians, is the employment of selective translation. Fleck, a celebrity in his bluegrass/jazz Americana niche, is a wide-eyed total outsider in Uganda and Tanzania, where even those who speak English have thick enough accents that their words need to be subtitled. But Paladino only translates African song lyrics and conversations between locals when the content within is essential to understanding a scene. This forces us to really contemplate the imagery and the sound of the music––elements that are so universal they need no translation––to pick up most emotional cues, and for the most part, it works beautifully. For a film about the power of music to shatter cultural and historic barriers and unite people based on pure feeling, I can’t imagine a tighter welding of form and content.

It’s in the first half of the film that Fleck’s enthusiasm for––and obvious feeling of humility in the presence of––the musicians he encounters in Africa seems most infectious. In the first tenuous collaborations, once Fleck and the local musicians figure out how to transverse what they don’t understand about one another, their music-making sessions seem to boil up to a level of intense emotion very quickly. In Uganda, Fleck’s local partner is driven to reluctant, uncontrollable tears by a song about his father; towards the end of his stay in Tanzania, after collaborating with the blind, enigmatic finger piano genius Anania, Fleck admits, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way.” It’s a beautiful illustration of powerlessness in the face of art, as this should-be-jaded professional musician surrenders to music’s power to dredge up feelings against our will.

This might be a subjective observation –– I imagine your enjoyment of the film will depend somewhat on your level of Fleck fandom, and admittedly, for me a little banjo goes a long way — but as Fleck and his crew travel to the west coast of the continent, the emotional power of what’s on screen seems to dissipate. On the Eastern coast, the implicit issues of culture clash and colonialism are more present, and this adds a certain charge to Fleck’s musical collaborations.

The title Throw Down Your Heart alludes to the film’s primary text about the emotional power of music, but it’s also a reference to the film’s barely spoken but very present subtext. “Throw down your heart” is the English translation of the name of a town in Tanzania which Fleck visits, a former slave trading port. We’re told the place earned it’s name because future slaves knew their fates when they saw the sea––this was the place where they were forced to give up their lives and loved ones, and throw down their hearts in surrender to the coming ordeal. And we’re told that banjos were taken on the ships, with music providing the only spirit-toking solace of the long journey to hell.

And here is Bela Fleck, a white American banjo player who says his stated goal with this project is to divorce the banjo from its equation with white Southern hickishness, and expose its African heritage. In order to do that, he has to go to the place where the instrument’s transport across continents and transfer in connotation literally began. Fleck and Paladino never say, “Bela Fleck has an artistic passion and a career because of slavery”––like so much of the music in the film, it doesn’t need literal translation––but in Tanzania, it’s a sad, uncomfortable realization that hangs over the proceedings. Judging by the look on Fleck’s face when he looks out at the sea, it’s quietly breaking his heart.

A version of this review appeared last year during the 2008 Sarasota Film Festival. Throw Down Your Heart begins a one week run at the IFC Center in New York tomorrow.