Garth Cartwright on what happened in a Harlem park 52 years ago that tapped into a greater sense of righting racial injustice both in America and abroad.
Think about it: the most exciting musical event of 2021 is a documentary film about a series of concerts held some 52 yearsago. Before accusing me of "nostalgia" or "living in the past" take a look at Summer of Soul (subtitled When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), the debut feature by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, a musician best known as leader of The Roots – a hip-hop band whose instrumental prowess graces many famous singers' albums – alongside often appearing as a talking head on documentaries about African-American music. He's obviously paid attention to the latter as his film is exceptional: across the decades I've seen countless music documentaries – the most famous of which, Woodstock, used to be a staple on TVNZ, while, for many years, going to a late-night screening of an in-concert performance by the likes of the Rolling Stones or Prince appeared the only chance we had to experience their live prowess – but nothing before matches Summer of Soul.
The level of talent here is stunning – leading blues, jazz, gospel, funk, soul, Latin and pop artists perform, all at (or near) their peak – and the music is so fresh, so dynamic, not yet weakened by substance abuse and ego and the corporatisation of the music industry. Here, then, the performances pack the power of surprise, a sense of music being made in and for a community (as opposed to simply being "product" to be consumed). And the community is Harlem, the African-American neighbourhood in upper Manhattan that, across the 20th century, served as an epicentre for Black creativity and activism. Summer of Soul conveys how the six free concerts, held on consecutive Sundays across June-July 1969 (so providing the film's core content) in a local park, were very much rooted in Harlem's joy and struggle. Thus Summer of Soul is a film about how music can bring people together to celebrate and share.
Questlove at the Summer Of Soul live concert at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem on June 19 in New York City. Photo / Getty Images
Famous names are essential for music documentaries to find a wide audience and, while several "stars" appear in Summer of Soul, the film is not about them. Instead, the film's focus is on music's role in a community that – as the film develops – we find struggling with the assassinations of prominent leaders (J.F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King jnr, Bobby Kennedy) while its young men are forced to fight in a wretched war (Vietnam) as a heroin epidemic wreaks havoc. Some of the artists who perform do, in contemporary interviews, discuss their experience while Greg Tate (a noted music journalist) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (writer of the hugely successful musical Hamilton) testify as to how important the concerts were to the respective African American and Puerto Rican communities they hail from. The best talking heads are the ordinary Harlem residents who attended the concerts – people who were children or teenagers in 1969 – and, by looking back, reflect with remarkable clarity and wit. Their experiences, alongside the music and the history, ensure Summer of Soul is exciting and funny, surprising and moving, in the way great movies – and music – can be.
It's a film about artistry and activism, community and society, change and things staying the same. Even if you don't know any of the musicians featured here, I believe you can still enjoy Summer of Soul as a cinematic experience.
The hype surrounding Summer of Soul has centred around how the concert footage here has been "lost" for 51 years. Thus Questlove has been able to spout in interviews about how if Summer of Soul had been released (as was intended) in 1970, what a huge impact it would have had. For, he points out, look at Woodstock – the film that documented a rock festival that took place 100 miles north of Harlem in August 1969 - and came to define rock festivals, the hippie lifestyle and music documentaries. The Woodstock film and its 3-LP soundtrack also generated many millions of dollars, a music industry phenomenon.
Nina Simone performs at Harlem in 1969. Photo / Searchlight Pictures/ 20th Century Studios
Summer of Soul is actually the better film (with stronger music) but, if it had been released in 1970, I doubt it would have matched Woodstock's impact. Summer of Soul is a celebration of Harlem and African American artistry while Woodstock captures hippie rock at its zenith and thus played to a much wider demographic – only one act, the mighty Sly and the Family Stone – performed at both festivals. And the footage of them in Harlem is far less flashy (being shot on a small stage in daylight) than their game-changing, nighttime performance at Woodstock.
For Woodstock, both the festival and the film, was produced by people with deep pockets: they understood the vast potential fortunes to be made from rock music as a huge spectacle. Summer of Soul is, in every sense, a down-home affair.
Questlove told the New York Times the concert footage sat in Hal Tulchin's – who filmed the Harlem Cultural Festival – basement for 50 years. This is somewhat misleading: Tulchin made two CBS TV documentaries from the footage (this explains why some of the performances have been floating around YouTube for years) but couldn't get a film deal, even though he pushed his film as being the "Black Woodstock". In 2004 Joe Lauro, an American film archivist and director, approached Tulchin about turning his footage into a documentary. Tulchin agreed but, in 2007 - after a production deal fell through, he withdrew his co-operation. Lauro's understandably aggrieved that his role in raising awareness of the footage has been written out of the Summer story but his failure to get a production deal may have, ultimately, been beneficial. If Summer of Soul had been made during the Obama era, it's unlikely to have had the impact it now does after Trump, Black Lives Matter and a pandemic that has made everyone think harder on community and what really has value.
And it's the film's impact that makes Questlove's self-mythologising of himself as "rescuer of lost footage" excusable. Because what they have here is gold, artistic achievement so intense it should be seen as widely as is possible. While Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone, Nina Simone, The 5th Dimension and Gladys Knight and the Pips – all of whom achieved huge crossover success – feature (and are stunning), performances by lesser-known artists lend even greater resonance. Gospel has always played a pivotal role in African American culture and festival organiser Tony Lawrence (a Harlem lounge singer and hustler) understood this, so booked Mahalia Jackson, The Staple Singers and Edwin Hawkins Singers.
B.B. King performing at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969. Photo / Searchlight Pictures / 20th Century Studios
Jackson was gospel's superstar, an icon who sang at Martin Luther King jnr's funeral. The Staple Singers, veterans of the Civil Rights struggle, were charting with tunes like Respect Yourself and I'll Take You There. Meanwhile, the Edwin Hawkins Singers had just scored a huge hit with their stunning interpretation of Oh Happy Day.
The gospel performances anchor the film and the scene where Jackson asks Mavis Staples to help her sing Take My Hand, Precious Lord is immensely moving. B.B. King is here, a representative of the Southern blues that African American music grew out of. Jazz was at its most furious and confrontational in the 1960s - here we see snatches of guitarist Sonny Sharrock, flautist Herbie Mann, drummer Max Roach and vocalist Abby Lincoln, all performing as if on fire. East Harlem was often referred to as "Spanish Harlem" due to its large Latin populace and Mongo Santamaria (Cuba) and Ray Barretto (Puerto Rico) play pulsing, percussive music that would soon be widely known as "salsa". Hugh Masekela (the exiled South African trumpeter) and an African dance troupe demonstrate how the festival embraced a far wider Afro diaspora than was then widely recognised. There are also several comedians, including Moms Mabley, who had her roots in vaudeville. It's their dynamism that makes Summer of Soul so compelling and reminds of music's power to engage, surprise and move us.
Thing is, it's not just the music that makes this film remarkable – the comments from people who attended illuminate the shared joy of all involved alongside a growing sense of racial confidence. "It smelt like Afrosheen and chicken – it was the ultimate Black picnic," says one woman. A man who attended as a boy recalls how enamoured he was with Marilyn McCoo (of The 5th Dimension), noting "she was my first crush". The year 1969 was "pivotal," says the Rev. Al Sharpton, emphasising this was "where the Negro died and Black was born". Charlayne Hunter-Gault describes her experience in 1961 as the first Black female student to be enrolled at the University of Georgia: she then went on to become the first Black female journalist in the New York Times newsroom and fought for Black to replace negro as the paper's noun of choice. The presence of the Black Panthers, a revolutionary organisation aimed at confronting police brutality, is noted. Revolution does appear in the air and Gladys Knight says of the Harlem festival, "It wasn't just the music; we wanted progress."
Gladys Knight and the Pips. Photo / Searchlight Pictures / 20th Century Studios
Harlem is the film's star: portrayed here the community is bursting with exciting energies. Questlove documents the new fashions – dashiki shirts, afros – and enthusiasms embraced. The landing of Apollo 11 on the moon occurred while the cultural festival was underway and attendees are asked for their thoughts on this historic event – almost all are dismissive, suggesting the billions spent on space exploration would be better invested in helping Harlem (and other deprived communities). As we now live in an age where billionaires' take private flights into space while the US remains torn by racial injustice and poverty, their cynicism appears fitting.
To get an American perspective on Summer of Soul, I approached Aaron Cohen, a Chicago-based soul music historian and author of Amazing Grace (on Aretha Franklin's seminal 1972 gospel concert) and Move On Up (a book documenting Chicago's heyday as a soul city). "The music is so incredible," says Cohen of the film's rapturous response. "I can't imagine who wouldn't be elated when watching it.
That this music remains internationally embraced more than 50 years later and — in the case of New Zealand — very far away from where the Harlem festival was staged proves how strong the artistry was. The diversity among the musicians on display during the film's two hours says a great deal: in many ways, Ray Barretto and The 5th Dimension have little in common but that this stage made room for them says a lot. At the same time, there is much more to the film than just the music—like with Wattstax (a 1973 documentary feature on a soul music festival held in Watts, Los Angeles' African American neighbourhood), this film provides a sense of what was happening in the community surrounding the festival."
New Zealand viewers will bring their own perspectives to Summer of Soul: recent reflections on the Polynesian Panthers and the dawn raids alongside Heed The Call!, an LP celebrating overlooked Māori and Polynesian soul/funk/disco artists of the 1970s, suggest it will chime here. Indeed, what happened in a Harlem park 52 years ago taps into a greater sense of righting racial injustice and engaging in a more thorough reading of history, both in America and elsewhere.
One thing is certain, for all the joy in the film a deep sense of sadness lingers: the past 50 years have proved that, even after twice having elected Barack Obama, racism and police oppression, drug addiction and poverty, continue to destabilise African American communities. Questlove has noted that he originally intended to finish the film with 19-year-old Stevie Wonder's ebullient performance but the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer saw him shift Wonder to the start, instead employing Nina Simone's angry rhetoric as coda. Al Sharpton describes Simone as possessing "a tone between hope and mourning" and, upon leaving the cinema, I felt both elated and blue. Here, then, is a film that emphasises Black Lives Matter without once mentioning those three words.
Summer of Soul will be available on Disney+ on September 29
