Writing by Dylan James, Image courtesy of Vulcan Productions
“1969 was the year when the Negro died, and Black was born.”
These are the words spoken by Reverend Al Sharpton in the new documentary film “Summer of Soul (or…When the Revolution Would Not Be Televised),” which chronicles the widely forgotten Harlem Cultural Festival that summer.
Director Amir “Questlove” Thompson, best known as a founding member of the hip-hop staple Roots crew and bandleader for The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, has unearthed hours of never-before-seen footage from the colossal event and cultivated multiple sequences to bring us a chapter of American cultural history that our textbooks neglected to print. This festival was nicknamed “Black Woodstock,” and with good reason. Black artists of all calibers, ages and styles trekked to the smoldering stage in a Harlem, N.Y. park to perform.
Picture B.B. King, Sly & The Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, and Moms Mabley all on the same ticket. Don’t believe it? Neither did the director of this film, until he saw it with his own eyes.
To understand the festival, one must understand Harlem: the melting pot of Black culture. The event was described in the film as a “cross-section of what was happening at the time.” Still reeling from the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., an air of disenchantment, anguish and rage permeated the American atmosphere.
“Summer of Soul” showcases every aspect of Black talent, Black spirit and Black persistence, channeled through music from this era as a means of survival. The festival, a culmination of too many woeful tragedies and mere symbolic victories, played out like a Sunday Service: there was rejoicing, gripping emotional testimony and humbling reminders of the journey for equality still ahead. Do not think for a second that you will be free from its grasp. When Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson perform a nearly ten-minute long rendition of “Precious Love,” I defy you to stay completely still.
What helps to elevate the impact of this event are some interviews conducted by Questlove of multiple attendees of the festival, who paint broad pictures of that experience. It seemed to live through them and define a central moment of their development as a human being. One attendee shared the story of lying to her mother about going to see her aunt, really going to witness the show—and winding up in the front row! In a move that’s near meta, we see the festival-goers watch the old videotape of the show. There are tears, naturally, as they are witnessing the physical resurrection of a memory.
To make the claim that “Summer of Soul” is an important piece of cinema is an understatement compared to its legitimate weight. This is a history class in itself; a celebration and a reminder of where Black Americans were, what they felt and had to say at that time. Strung together by a brilliant, empathetic man named Questlove, its content resounds with the voices of angels.
It could very well be that the reason why this footage was hidden away for so long was because human ears did not deserve to hear those heavenly sounds a second time.
