Another giant leap

Catch one of the first showings in North America of What About Me? at Grass Valley’s Center for the Arts this Saturday. The follow-up to the multimedia project 1 Giant Leap—nominated for two Grammy awards back in 2002—What About Me? is the culmination of a four-year journey by musician/producers Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman to 50 locations around the world.

Catto—of the British trip-hop group Faithless—and Bridgeman took a laptop and mobile recording equipment on the road to record musicians in every corner of the globe. They then added these contributions to their own basic tracks, weaving it all together to create authentic “world” music. Santana, Michael Franti, K.D. Lang and Michael Stipe appear in the film, along with world music royalty such as Baaba Maal, Lila Downs, Rokia Traore, Oumou Sangaré and Zap Mama. But it’s the other faces and musicians—Chinese rappers, Gabonese Pygmies, Bedouin musicians—that make this project stand out.

In addition to the musicians, Bridgeman and Catto interviewed others—big names like Eckhart Tolle, Noam Chomsky and Stephen Fry, as well as grave diggers and taxi drivers—along the way about “the human experience.” These spoken-word sections are also woven into the film.

The Bay Area’s DJ Dragonfly—who often drums along to his sets—will be spinning records after the film screening.

The event is a benefit for Sustainable Harvest International, an organization that “collaborates with local communities in developing countries to develop sustainable agricultural practices, which help reduce global warming from slash and burn farming, and better enable them to feed their local community.” More information may be found at www.sustainableharvest.org.