Screen Picks

Musical Brotherhoods from the Trans-Saharan Highway

by Sam Adams

Musical Brotherhoods from the Trans-Saharan Highway (Sat., Jan 6, 7 p.m., International House, 3701 Chestnut St. ) Produced by Alan Bishop of the avant-rock outfit Sun City Girls and released by the out-music collective Sublime Frequencies, this compilation of performances by North African street musicians compensates for its no-frills look with a florid preamble, proclaiming the titular byway a home for "magicians, fortune-tellers, acrobats, monkey handlers, snake charmers, astrologers, numerologists and sorcerers." It's hard to tell if this is meant to be a parody of Orientalist rhetoric or simply a shining example of it, and what follows doesn't provide much clue: Apart from a passing mention of Morocco and an unexplained reference to the Jemaa el Fna (Marrakech's busy central square), there's nothing to contextualize any of the movie's performers or their music. It may strike the movie's makers as an unvarnished way of presenting them in their natural habitat, but feels equally like seeing the country from the windows of a moving car.

But taken on its own terms, like an unlabeled tape found in a thrift-store bin, Musical Brotherhoods is frequently entrancing and never less than intriguing. Musicians pluck wildly at an instrument that looks like a six-string banjo, one channeling it through an overcranked amplifier that makes each note sound like a swarm of bees. Whether or not it lives up to its billing as an antidote to remote-control culture, the movie provides ample reason not to change the channel.

(sam@citypaper.net)