SWISS film-maker Markus Elgoff launched his film, The Art of Making Music a Way of Life — The Inna de Yard Project — in Switzerland in late September with a series of performances featuring respected Jamaican session guitarist Earl ‘Chinna’ Smith.

Smith, his daughter Jhamiela and Italian singer Sabrina Pallini did five shows to help promote the film, which is based on the musician’s Inna de Yard acoustic concept that was launched at his St Andrew home eight years ago.

Elgoff’s film premiered in September 2012 at the Redbones Blues Café in St Andrew and showcased Smith and the multi-member Inna de Yard troupe. While a small budget prevented him from taking the entire band to Switzerland, Elgoff is pleased The Art of Making Music a Way of Life was finally shown in his homeland.

“It was a unique event with film and live performance, feedback from radio and audience has been right. We had a lot of fun on this little tour,” Elgoff, 50, told the Jamaica Observer.

The Smiths and Pallini performed in Locarno, Porto Ronco Beach, Lugano, Zurich and Bellinzona.

Smith, 59, is reggae’s most prolific session musician. He has been recording since the early 1970s, starting with artistes such as Augustus Pablo, Dennis Brown and Yabby You before joining Bob Marley’s Wailers band in 1976.

In 2006, he started the Inna de Yard project which has yielded a number of well-received acoustic albums by the Congos, Junior Murvin, Kiddus I and Linval Thompson, among others.

Elgoff, who hails from the city of St Gallen in Switzerland, has been listening to reggae since the late 1970s and visits Jamaica regularly. He began production on the Inna de Yard film three years ago.