FOLKIES TO HURL BANJOS INTO GOWANUS CANAL AT BROOKLYN FOLK FEST

APRIL 10 COMPETITION MERGES MUSIC, SPORTS, MURKY WATER

When the Brooklyn Folk Festival returns to St. Anne's Church in April, it'll include what's become one of the annual event's most popular traditions: the legendary banjo toss.

"The banjo toss is a world famous epic event, looked forward to by millions desperate for catharsis!," jokes festival founder and producer Eli Smith, who first launched the first Brooklyn Folk Festival in 2009. A longtime banjo player himself, Smith also performs with the Down Hill Strugglers, an old-time string band that will perform at the Brooklyn Folk Festival with special guest John Cohen.

Hailed by The Associated Press for giving "new meaning to the term heavy metal," the banjo toss takes place at the Gowanus Canal, a waterway that once served as a major transportation route for Brooklyn's factories, tanneries and mills. Taking place on Sunday, April 10th — the final afternoon of the three-day festival, most of which takes place at St. Anne's Church on Montague Street — the event brings dozens of competitors to the canal's shoreline in South Brooklyn, with all participants taking turns throwing a banjo into the murky water. The farthest toss wins, with last year's prize-winning throw measuring a whopping 85 feet. Winners take home a free banjo.

Here's a video recap of the 2015 festival that includes footage of the banjo toss.

The banjo toss also brings some needed attention to the Gowanus Canal, whose once-busy waters have become the source of pollution over the past half-century. In the years immediately following World War I, it was America's busiest commercial canal, with more than six million tons of cargo being shipped along its waters every year. With all that activity came a severe level of contamination, though. There isn't much recreation alongside the canal these days, making the banjo toss all the more unique.  Rubber gloves are provided for contestants.

This year's banjo toss will take place at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 10th, with all competitors and onlookers encouraged to meet at the intersection of Smith and 9th Street before parading with a live banjo toss jug band band to the so-called "banjo tossing arena."