This past weekend I watched an incredible film by musician and producer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of music group The Roots called Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised.) It is a documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, which featured African-American musicians and celebrated Black culture. The festival featured musicians such as Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, The Fifth Dimension, Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples. People who went to the festival and who performed at the festival talked about how incredible it was, and especially during a time of upheaval and trauma. During this time, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X were assassinated and the Black Panther Party was being established. It was really sad to hear that this footage wasn’t shown for many years; I hadn’t seen the footage before and I wasn’t even born when they had the Harlem Cultural Festival. Honestly if I hadn’t seen this film I wouldn’t have known about the Harlem Cultural Festival. It went on one hundred miles from the Woodstock Festival, which many people know about either because they went to it or because we studied about it in U.S. history class, and yet the festival footage was left to collect dust until Questlove directed the documentary. I grew up seeing plenty of footage from Woodstock because it was so ubiquitous, but it’s a bummer I hadn’t seen the Harlem Cultural Festival before. But I am so grateful to Questlove for putting this movie out there so that I could appreciate the music and the festival footage.
There was no way I was sitting through this movie and not dancing. The music was so groovy, and especially when Stevie Wonder performed a song called “Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Ba-Day” and he was really getting into the music. During this time period music was therapy for Black communities because people didn’t have a whole bunch of access to therapy or mental health resources, so people sang to express pain and hope for a better future. Seeing Mahalia Jackson singing in the documentary gave me goosebumps because she is just such a powerhouse. I remember studying about musical traditions in the Black Church, but when you actually see performances of Black Church music it is a really incredible experience. I really loved Sly and the Family Stone because they brought so much energy to their performance, and I loved their outfits. It would have been such an incredible experience to attend this festival.
One part of the film that interested me was that they showed footage of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, and a white reporter visited the Harlem Cultural Festival and saw that most people weren’t sitting in front of the television watching Armstrong land on the moon, but instead attending the festival. When the reporter asked the people at the festival what they thought of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, many people said that there were bigger issues to worry about, namely poverty, crime and drugs in the Black community and how the government spent all this money on the moon mission that could have gone to helping people in the Black community gain access to resources. This was another perspective for me to think about, because growing up I would watch TV shows and read books and Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in 1969 was definitely a huge event, but I didn’t think about the disadvantage of the mission, which was the cost to go and how that money could have gone to address a lot of the class and racial inequalities in American society.
Nina Simone’s performance was especially incredible because I love Nina Simone. Her music has this raw power to it that runs through my body like electricity. When she performed she had her hair stacked in braids and wrapped up really high and this gorgeous daishiki-looking dress, and she just brought so much power to her playing the piano and singing. She recited a poem about being Black and proud and had the audience participate in a call and response as she was singing and reciting the poem over music. The film also talked about how the word “Black” was offensive at the time, but during the festival the songs encouraged people to have pride in being “Black.” Black people were called “Negro” before, but there were songs called “Say It Loud I’m Black and I’m Proud” and “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” that celebrated being Black. I love Nina’s music. I remember when I was either in high school or college I listened to one of her albums that I checked out from the library and I fell in love with her music, especially the song “Sinnerman.”
It was really interesting to learn about the history during the time of the festival, and how the festival was a chance to bring people together. There weren’t just Black people at the festival, but also white people and people of other races. They featured Puerto Rican musicians like Ray Barretto and I love how he and the other musicians jammed on the drums. I also loved seeing Gladys Knight and the Pips because I love “Midnight Train to Georgia” and hadn’t seen much early footage of her performances. Watching the footage of the festival gave me much more appreciation for the legacies of Motown and African-American culture and music. After watching the movie I couldn’t stop listening to “Shoo-Be-Doo-BeDoo-Da-Day” by Stevie Wonder because it is just such an amazing song.
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