Score: Composed

COMPOSED

At this year’s Academy Awards, Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah (2020) picked up two Oscars— Daniel Kaluuya received the award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Black Panther chairman Fred Hampton and H.E.R.’s song Fight For You won Best Original Song. Influenced by the soul music of the late 1960s and 70s, the song’s sentiment is pertinent to both historical and contemporary civil rights movements. The song was a part of the film’s inspired album that featured tracks by Nas, Jay Z and A$AP Rocky. Lyrics such as “their guns don’t play fair” and “freedom gon’ keep us strong” resonate with the protesting voices of civil rights campaigners across time. Another film of the season, One Night in Miami (2020), sees Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke singing A Change is Gonna Come in the film’s closing montage. The montage marks the shift in Cooke’s career, from the crooning soulful recording artist to the more overtly political King of Soul, prematurely murdered in the same year as the song’s release in 1964. Rather than simply underscoring the final scene, Odom Jr.’s performance is politically charged and heightens the significance of the events on screen.

From the King to the Queen of Soul, the upcoming Aretha Franklin biopic titled Respect (2021) takes its name from one of Franklin’s most iconic songs and lauds an artist who has paved the way. The documentary film Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021) also celebrates Black musicians, culture-makers and their audiences. The documentary collates previously unseen footage of the sixweek-long 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival and interrogates why a widely attended festival was erased from cultural history. This year’s awards season also saw Disney Pixar’s first film starring an African American protagonist, Soul (2020), pick up Best Original Score and Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, Golden Globes and BAFTAS. The film sets its narrative against the background of jazz music without explicit politicisation. Music has always been an artistic medium through which Black creatives have been appreciated but has also been utilised as a form of protest. Award recognition is one way in which to quantify success and can help green light future projects but cannot be the yardstick by which we measure change. H.E.R.’s Oscar speech concluded, “Knowledge is power. Music is power… I’m always going to fight for my people and fight for what’s right. And I think that’s what music does. And that’s what storytelling does.” Rather than waiting for creative industries and other systems to change, these films and their music convey messages of struggle, defiance, and ultimately, the hope for racial equality and mutual respect. H.E.R. stated that, “We’re passing the torch and continuing on Hampton’s work.” And, in their various ways, filmmakers and musicians build on the foundations set down by those who came before. Una McKeown n