Afterword: Vieux Farka Toure, Movie Without Guns

Tim Van Schmidt | New SCENE

All it took was a little encouragement.

That is, about three-quarters of the way through his set at The Armory on April 15, Vieux Farka Toure told the sold-out crowd that it was OK to stand up and move — he was going to ratchet up the pace of his kinetic music a little more and the time was ripe for getting out of your seat.

A few people had already been dancing to the side of the venue, but it had mostly been a sit-down affair. Then Toure repeated himself — adding, “You do that, right?” — and suddenly, the entire place was up and a great concert became a celebration.

Toure brought his spicy and mesmerizing guitar style to The Armory from Mali, and the sound was exotic — the guitarist and his two-piece band setting up a kind of rolling drone over which Toure let his fingers fly up and down the fretboard in short, sharp bursts.

Finally, Toure brought things down to a deep, low blues, dramatic, and show-stopping. And then it was time to dance.

Opening the show was keyboardist and composer JaRon Marshall, known for his work with the Black Pumas. Marshall set up multiple soundtracks and added the plaintive sound of the Melodica. The music was jazzy and funky, setting its own time and space. 

I’ll say definitively that this show was the most fun I’ve ever had at The Armory. Coming to The Armory: Ben Solee on June 3, Robyn Hitchcock on June 17, and Vienna Teng on July 15. 

Movies: I saw them. Some recent popular movies that is.

“Bullet Train” was a happy-go-lucky blood fest with professional killers focused on killing each other on a speeding train. “Tar” was about a female symphony conductor who battles misogyny and her own darker impulses.

“The Woman King” combined heart with ultra-violence as an army of female warriors protect their homeland against invaders and slavers. They are led by a stalwart general with a painful past that catches up to her as she embarks on her most challenging military campaigns. A sisterhood among the warriors creates a nurturing place for women, while slavery initiates bloody warfare.

But to be honest, none of those movies were ultimately satisfying.

Instead, the most satisfying movie I have seen recently didn’t have a single gun in it, not a single death or even a fistfight. We wonder why our country has so much violence while our entertainment has so much violence in it.

The movie I’m talking about is “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” a 2020 production from Bhutan. It follows the journey of a young, uninspired teacher — living in the happiest nation on the planet — as he is assigned to the world’s most remote school in the Bhutan highlands.

The young teacher wants to play music and travel to Australia, but his experience in Lunana, the village he lands up in, teaches him some deeper values.

One of those values is caring for those around you, something he ends up doing despite the fact that his iPod runs out of juice and that music becomes more than just a song, a guitar, and a rowdy bar.

This movie was refreshing. It talked about human values without lowball attempts to put a fearful spin on things. I came out rooting for the young man and wishing the best for the villagers he leaves behind but with regret.

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