Plus Selected Video Shorts from Doug Wendt's International Music Collection The Madagascar countryside is alive with Hira Gasy bands, traditional troupes that blend folk music with vaudevillian antics. Organized like large extended families, the Hira Gasy, some 150 of whom are presently at large, play for the local ceremonies that regularly occur in small Malagasy villages. Jeremy Marre's The Left-Handed Man of Madagascar follows one such group, lead by the waxen and witty, yes, Left-Handed Man, an unusually florid gent of uncanny wisdom. Bouncing along potholed roads, the band's small bus makes its way through the late summer landscape. Performing at circumcisions, famadihana (the exhumation of the dead), and other ritual events, the Hira Gasy bring a festive tone to the proceedings, but also a bounty of folkloric learning. Trumpets, squeeze-boxes, guitars, drums and an entire choral crew are the back-up for proverb-laden songs that convey the lush prose of Madagascar. When the Left-Handed Man isn't imparting his witticisms first-hand, his diaries of the band's travels provide the necessary flora, read almost in high camp by Guy Deghy, a very colonial-sounding fellow. Bouncy as an old Hira Gasy bus, The Left-Handed Man of Madagascar takes you down a road well worth travelling. --Steve Seid