Questlove’s ‘Summer Of Soul’ is the story of black healing: NPR

On the roof, the new party movie summer of the soul It could easily be read as a black alternative to the well-documented four days of Woodstock – the white-dominated music festival that gained great attention in August of 1969. But Woodstock, while anti-war and anti-imperialist, was also synonymous with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Every weekend from June 29 to August 24, 1969, thousands of Harlem residents flock to what is now Marcus Garvey Park. The theater has featured extraordinary artists from the sister harmony of The Staple Singers to the headliner sets of BB King and Steve Wonder. Unlike Woodstock, these concerts were not a celebration of hippie counterculture, but a direct response to the profound losses and violence suffered by black and progressive activists prior to that summer.

Nonviolent and legislative attempts to deconstruct institutional racism led to a devastating series of political assassinations during the 1960s, most of which were attributed to obscure conspiracy theories. After losing Medgar Evers in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, and then Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, ordinary blacks are tired of counting the number of martyrs.

The 1969 edition of the festival was a carefully orchestrated reaction to these cumulative losses. Black America’s acute sense of enforced denial of both altruistic leadership and hope has made the Harlem Cultural Festival all about more than just music. As musician and director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson illustrates the strategic direction, these concerts were organized to reveal and encourage a new pan-Africanist push for social justice.

A global gathering of music and words

To tell the story of the third Harlem Cultural Festival, Questlove distributes gorgeous performance footage with a mosaic of talking heads. We not only hear from people interviewed in ’69, but we also get contemporary reflections from surviving eyewitnesses who were teens or early twenties when they attended these concerts. Back then, as now, they saw money wasted on wars and absurd spaceflights that would be better spent solving critical environmental problems on Earth.

A particularly insightful segment is devoted to the Apollo 11 lunar landing that was broadcast over the moon during the summer of 1969. Questlove steps away from grainy black-and-white videos from NASA to show Walter Cronkite and other television reporters interviewing indifferent black festival-goers. One interviewee clearly stated that the moon landing is in no way more important than the speakers and musicians celebrating black unity at Mount Morris Park. Another cool young man owes taxpayer money to wasted space exploration when it could be used to eradicate poverty and racial oppression here on Earth.

As a musician, Questlove pays special attention to his list of amazing musical talents. Through the 40 hours of the film, he and editor Joshua L. Pearson selected the most representative moments, whether it was powerful Afro-Latin numbers given by deceased greats like Mongo Santamaria and Ray Barreto, or South African Jasman Hugh Masekela whose presence reminds us that he and compatriot Miriam Makeba escaped from apartheid South Africa to join musical forces with protest singers Black Americans.

But it was a long line of gospel music that became a sentimental pin for an event dedicated to the legacy of civil rights martyrs like King and Malcolm X. Dressed in chorus of luxury, Edwin Hawkins Singers made the triumphant promise of “Oh happy day.” Swinging evangelical groups delivered encouraging but satirical sermons on unorthodox tones. Great soloist Mahalia Jackson, a close friend of the late Dr. King, gave voice to the collective need to mourn his sacrifice by singing his favorite hymn with a broken heart audibly. Jesse Jackson took to the stage to announce that she and Mavis Staples would trade “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” but Mahalia gives the young singer her most melancholy verses, saving her voice for powerful shouts and groans that convey a depth of feeling beyond words.

A city and society at a crossroads

Financially, the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival was sponsored by New York City and the Maxwell House Coffee Company. Advance preparations for the event were so elaborate that a sponsor was required to ensure that the musicians were paid and the event was filmed. John Lindsey, a liberal Republican, was the mayor of New York City from 1966-1973, and a staunch ally of his city’s beleaguered black and white residents. In 1967, Lindsey became vice-chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorder, which President Johnson set up during the Detroit riots to investigate how best to prevent further urban unrest.

Sadly, the LBJ chose to ignore the findings of the so-called “Kerner Commission,” which cautioned in part: “What white Americans do not fully understand—but what the Negro can never forget—is that the white community is deeply involved in the ghetto. The White Institutions it created, the institutions White keeps it, and white society condones it.” Shortly after this report was published in 1968, New York became one of several American cities that erupted into street riots when Dr. King was shot. The Kerner Report’s proposals had to be publicized by proactive mayors such as John Lindsay before similar initiatives were widely implemented by the federal government. Lindsey and his advisors walked the streets of Harlem the night after King’s death. Hear from black community leaders and then develop summer work and lunch programs for young urban teens.

I will personally benefit from these programs once I reach adulthood. My aunt, who runs a small business on 125^{The tenth} Street, hope began again. Months later, Mayor Lindsey helped music promoter Tony Lawrence produce a six-week free concert series in central Harlem Park during the summer of 1969. Somehow Lindsay and Lawrence realized that the constant application of the right music at the right time could help heal a large, slowly vomiting wound In the collective spirit of the black and brown New York community.

The multiculturalism presented in this film deliberately contrasts the unifying values ​​of Pan-Africanism with the oppressive values ​​of white supremacy. Where the history of hereditary slavery (and its social and economic consequences) sought to permanently raise the status of European nations over the non-European peoples who exploited them, the history of Pan-Africanism has not recognized any race or ethnicity as inherently superior to anyone else. From W.E.B. Dubois’ post-war attempt to get European powers to grant autonomy to their African colonies in 1919, to Garvey’s UNIA, to today’s Black Lives Matter movement, the pan-African agenda requires recognition of the equal value and potential of white and non-white cultures.

Mass Abundance, Lost and Regained in Time

By most accounts, aside from certain festival excerpts aired early on by WNEW TV and long afterwards licensing some concert clips to record companies like Sony for archival video projects, most Harlem Festival footage remained unseen for decades. Questlove said he believes that the fact that no one has bought these historical performances and compiled them into a musical documentary before represents an attempt to deliberately ignore or erase black cultural activism. He says, “The fact that 40 hours of footage was withheld from the public is living proof of the existence of revisionist history. It was very important for me to correct this history.”

Perhaps mainstream gatekeepers hoped that future generations would forget the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, though other Black Pride redemptive festivities in Ghana, Zaire and Los Angeles were filmed and theatrically released during the 1970s. summer of the soul Follows in the spirit of empowering black party movies like soul to soul (1971) (organized to celebrate Ghana’s 14th anniversary of independence) and Whatstacks (1973), a fundraiser by Stax Records and Jesse Jackson to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots in Los Angeles.

WhatstacksIn addition to featuring Isaac Hayes at the height of his solo stardom as “Black Moses,” it contained clips of Richard Pryor’s nightclub routines that resembled the comedic clips Koestloff selected for inclusion from Moms Mabley and Redd Foxx. Questlove probably studied concert films in the ’70s because of the ways in which it was done summer of the soul Diverse styles of live music are similarly interspersed with sharp notes from the participants.

Thus, satirical humor is far from out of place in these frankly political films. It shows that in the midst of the joy and catharsis of black musical expression, our proven ability to laugh in the face of adversity, and to use jokes to express truth to power, remains the foundation of Black Americans’ resilience and survival. Now, with this movie showing in cinemas and streaming on Hulu, one of the oldest pairs of black musical genius and ambitious political intent could re-enter the public consciousness.

Carol Cooper is a cultural critic. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Clive Davis Conservatory of Recorded Music at New York University.