Exposition: Summer Of Soul

Summer of Soul

Summer of Soul (…or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) opens with a musical performance by Stevie Wonder playing the drums. It is unexpected, stirring, and utterly captivating. This prodigious feat of percussion sets the tone for the rest of the film.

Directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the documentary depicts the Harlem Culture Festival of 1969. Just one-hundred miles from Woodstock, it was another festival making musical history. Black, revolutionary history. With performances from legends such as Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Mahalia Jackson and more, the festival was a showcase of the most exceptional Black artists of the time. From Motown to Blues, to diasporic Latinx music, Summer of Soul transports us to the summer of ‘69. One attendee describes the experience as the “ultimate Black barbeque”, with people from all age groups filling Mount Morris Park.

Nina Simone

Sly and the Family Stone

Nina Simone’s performance – one of the final shown in the documentary – includes one of the first live performances of her anthem ‘To be Young, Gifted, and Black’. She sings: “Open your heart to what I mean, we must begin to tell our young, there’s a world waiting for you, yours is the quest that’s just begun.” Simone carries herself onto the stage with such grace and authority, cool and collected in front of an audience of fifty thousand. She embodies the description of an “African princess”, bestowed upon her by an attendee. Simone leads them in a chant “Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud.” This phrase, as Thompson notes, spoke to the new generation of young Black people “who were very impatient, very demanding. They were about bucking the system. They referred to themselves as ‘Black.’ They had a sharper edge to their form of protest. And Simone spoke to that.” The footage, playing in brilliant technicolour, is so vivid and encompassing it is easy to forget the festival occurred over fifty years ago. However, when we see clips of individuals expressing their frustrations towards racial discrimination and police violence, we are left wondering just how much (or how little) has changed in half a century. Thompson contemplates on this: “When things started to unravel around April and May 2020, and especially in June, I had a casual observation: Isn’t it weird? The same circumstances that brought this concert together are now happening again while we’re trying to make this movie?”

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson

At times, the footage feels like a religious experience – and not just from the gospel tunes. Writer Greg Tate states that, between gospel performances and free jazz, “there’s really not much difference between Mahalia catching the spirit and Sonny Sharrock catching the spirit when he did that crazy guitar solo.” Music acts as a release – a way to connect to the audience of the time, and to viewers now. Catharsis leads to joy, which acts as a force for liberation.

The Harlem Culture Festival was more than the ‘Black Woodstock’, it was a ground-breaking event in its own right, and we are so lucky to marvel at part of the historic spectacle through this documentary. Mojola Akinyemi n

Summer of Soul out in UK Cinemas now from Searchlight Pictures and on Disney+.