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In his directorial debut, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson delves into forgotten footage from a 1969 Harlem concert series that featured a who’s who of Black.
Not many people know his name, but half a century ago Tony Lawrence created something extraordinary in the middle of New York. And few people know the name Hal Tulchin, but he documented the feat. It was called the Harlem Cultural Festival, and for six weekends in the summer of 1969, it presented over five dozen acts and drew 300,000 people, who were not charged a dime to see – are you ready? – Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, BB King, Gladys Knight and the Pips, The Staple Singers, Sly and the Family Stone. To name a few of the artists, some in their prime and some innovators, who have graced the outdoor stage.
But this monumental alignment of stars – what some would later call the Black Woodstock – received little media attention, in part because it was eclipsed by the Woodstock, which took place during the pre-season. last weekend of the Harlem event and just a few hours. north, turning Max Yasgur’s farm into Ground Zero for a generation. Still, that’s a weak excuse for the shortage of headlines, or for the networks’ lack of interest in the images taken by television producer-director Tulchin (by spec) of the high-voltage range. The local CBS station aired a few highlights, but nationally there were no takers.
Thus the subtitle of Summer of the soul, Ahmir’s electrifying documentary “Questlove” Thompson about these concerts and the political climate in which they took place – a subtitle that riffs on an immortal twist of the late Gil Scott-Heron’s phrase: Or, when the revolution couldn’t be televised. The images were stored for decades, until Summer of the soulThe company’s producers have kicked the ball to give it its spotlight for a long time.
It’s no surprise that Thompson, an accomplished and famous musician, has a knack for revealing the emotional heart of concerts. Leading a feature film for the first time, he also lends the eye of a confident director to lost material, tackling it on three eloquently interwoven narrative tracks: the knockout concerts themselves; a piercing capsule portrait from 1969 as a turning point in black identity; and a collection of beautiful Boomer reminiscences loaded with those who were there, some on stage and others in the audience. The film captures several of them as they watch the previously unseen footage, dazzling proof of a moment in time that seems to have been written outside of the official story.
The result is deeply felt on both sides of the timeline, drawing clear parallels between two galvanizing historical periods, yesterday and today. A selection of the opening night of the first virtual edition of Sundance, Summer of the soul is as thoughtful as it is stimulating, a welcome dose of adrenaline to launch not only a film festival, but a new year.
From the evidence from the film, Lawrence, producer and master of ceremonies at Harlem Fest, was an extraordinary schmoozer with a predilection for pointy suits and puffy shirts. (He’s also somewhat of a mystery, his current whereabouts unknown, despite concerted efforts by the filmmakers to track him down.) Lawrence gained support from the city’s parks department and sponsorship from Maxwell House (Thompson includes a revealing ad centered on Africa for the coffee brand). Even with financial backing, there was no money for the lights, forcing the late afternoon show scene to face west. Liberal Mayor John V. Lindsay receives a warm welcome when introduced on stage by Lawrence as “our blue-eyed brother”. But dealing with the NYPD was another matter, and the Black Panthers signed on to provide security.
Compared to familiar scenes from Woodstock’s counter-cultural convergence, the Harlem Festival, with its audiences of all ages, is downright healthy business. The announcements on the scene are about wallets, not bad acid. For Musa Jackson, a kid at the time who was hanging out with his family, and whose delighted reactions to the footage ended the film perfectly, the festival was “the ultimate black barbecue” and “the first time I had seen so many of us. . “Touchingly, so were the performers. Gladys Knight recalls being ‘totally, totally taken aback” by the crowd she encountered in Mount Morris Park, a gathering one attendee described as “a Sea of Black “.
Among the strengths of Summer of the soul is the opportunity to see Billy Davis and Marilyn McCoo, of The 5th Dimension, watch, for the first time, their band’s performance this summer a long time ago. On the waves of public love, the exuberance of their young selves rises. So do the couple’s emotions as they remember what it felt like to perform their first show in Harlem. For a pop-oriented group considered “not black enough” by some, connecting with this upscale crowd was deeply important. A powerful sense of kinship between fans and performers pulsates through every frame of the doc’s concert stages.
Music spans the gamut: classic R&B (King), contemporary gospel (the Edwin Hawkins Singers, with Dorothy Combs Morrison’s earthy contralto), Motown (Gladys and those exhilaratingly synchronized Pips; a sweet and searing, freshly David Ruffin out of temptations), newfangled pop (The 5th Dimension), psychedelic soul (Sly and his utopian big-band constellation, with trumpeter and white drummer). Jazz ranges from bebop legend Roach to avant-garde Sonny Sharrock, Latin maestro Ray Barretto and South African innovator Hugh Masekela. There’s comedy, too: briefly chopped stage routines and, in a post-credits coda, a bit of false conflict between Stevie Wonder and his musical director, Gene Key.
With 39 songs on the soundtrack, most don’t play in their entirety, but it’s a testament to Tulchin’s vibrant imagery (he deployed five video cameras), Thompson’s astute directorial choices, and Joshua’s exquisite editing. L. Pearson who a stubborn sense of “snippet-itis” never interferes. The music flows, reinforced rather than hampered by the intersection of new interviews and vintage documentary footage.
The numbers playing in full swing are staggering, with the showstopper being a six-minute streak that can send chills through your spine while reorganizing the molecules in your earthly form. The gospel song in question, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”, was Martin Luther King’s favorite, and it was only a year since his murder when Mavis Staples and his idol, Mahalia Jackson, delved into his verses. and exploded.
Even for non-gospel acts, the alchemy of lamentation and joy of this genre is expressed in many performances. It’s the fuse that burns Summer of the soul, and, arguably, throughout much of black American culture: a resilient way of dealing with deep-rooted violence and injustice. Journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, one of the film’s outstanding interviewees, recalls the strength and comfort she gained from Nina Simone’s files when she was harassed by white students at the University of Georgia, where she was one of the first two black students. to break the color barrier in 1961.
The doc reflects on the long-term perspectives of key activists – including Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson (a concert attendee as leader of the Operation Breadbasket initiative) and Denise Oliver-Velez, formerly of the Young Lords – and looks forward to his coming-of-age memories. Sometimes they are the same. Writer-musician Greg Tate delivers an incisive commentary on the pivotal shift among black Americans, circa 1969, to self-identify as “nigger,” and how this has been expressed in music and fashion as well as in politics. .
Thompson and Pearson’s fluid interweaving between gigs and social context reaches a sublime peak in a sequence that combines Staples’s “It’s Been a Change” with festival-goers’ reactions, for local reporting, to landing on the moon, which coincided with the third weekend of the festival. Bites of songs and sounds signal an awakening of the base.
This Summer of the soul looks and sound as good as it is a considerable technical achievement. But more than that, the preservation of the 50-year-old images of Tulchin renders a vital piece in the chronicle of a period defined by social unrest, anti-war fervor, artistic pioneers and resounding liberation movements. still today. Tulchin, who died in 2017, hoped this documentary would be his legacy. That’s out of the question, for him and for event-maker and spirited showman, Lawrence.
The Harlem Cultural Festival was a statement of black pride. The power of Thompson’s film is how it taps into the urgency of the moment on a personal level as well as the larger scale, and his deep understanding that they are inseparable. “Are you ready, blacks? asks the majestic Simone to the audience. Brace yourselves, music and film lovers: during two spellbinding hours, the communion between artists and a summer crowd leaps off the screen and over the years.
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (US Documentary Competition)
Production companies: Vulcan Productions, Concordia Studio, Play / Action Pictures, LarryBilly Productions, Mass Distraction Media, RadicalMedia
Director: Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
Producers: David Dinerstein, Robert Fyvolent, Joseph Patel
Executive Producers: Jen Isaacson, Jon Kamen, Dave Sirulnick, Jody Allen, Ruth Johnston, Rocky Collins, Jannat Gargi, Beth Hubbard, Davis Guggenheim, Laurene Powell Jobs, Jeffrey Lurie, Marie Therese Guirgis, David Barse, Ron Eisenberg, Sheila Johnson, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
Director of Photography: Shawn Peters
Editor: Joshua L. Pearson
Sales: Cinetic Media
117 minutes
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