Name: I watched Summer of Soul between tears of joy and wonder and loss of a past era a brilliant film!
Item: Summer of Soul
Author: @stickupfilm

Introduction: One of the best concert movies of all time - excluded from history until now

Name: Summer of Soul or "When the the Revolution could not be Televised."

Director: Ahmir Thompson

Year 2021

Official Trailer

Review

In the same summer as Woodstock,1969, Harlem held its own black music concert - The Harlem Cultural festival. Low key (but not for anyone who was there) it was under budgeted, under publicised and used a makeshift stage facing the sun because there were no stage lights. The concert features performances with heart, soul, defiance and joy from black artists in their prime, like Steve Wonder, Nina Simone and Sly Stone. Now after these years, the footage has been released and it is spellbinding. It captures Wonder when he was transforming from a boy into a man and entering his new and best era of protest and innovative musicality. He is on fire on drums, keyboards and vocals. There is Mavis Staples duetting with her herione, the magnificent Mahalia Jackson. Nina Simone is the epitome of effortless cool and looks like an African Queen as she sings one of the most powerful black pride anthems in the show, "Young Gifted and Black," in a voice someone describes as being “somewhere between hope and mourning,” She reads a poem, "Are you Ready Black Man," with defiance and ferocity. While Nina Simone remains cool, Hugh Masekela’s performance of "Grazing in the Grass," especially his trumpet solo, is rousing and extreme. Sly Stone confounds the audience by introducing a mixed race psychedelic band - giving Sly some of the most spirited funky support I have even seen, all powered by a white drummer - the audience quickly realising that he is actually a guy that can play. Gladys Knight says, “it wasn’t just about the music,we wanted progress.” Her version of "I Heard it through the Grapevine" with co-ordinated dance routines and vocalising support from the Pips is just knock out. The Edwin Hawkins Singers perform their gospel hit, "Oh, Happy Day," Ray Barretto and Mongo Santamaría bring a Latin-fusion beat and BB King plays some of his best, stinging blues guitar. So while this feature debut intertwines some of the most emotionally driven gospel music on camera there are also incisive interviews about the politics of the day. The concert was hosted by Tony Lawrence and supported by the the likeable liberal Republican New York mayor, John Lindsay, with security by the Black Panthers - only some token white police were there and they look rather intimidated. There was no violence. The festival played out over six weekends in Mount Morris Park to a sea of joyous black Harlem folk bringing their children, their own food and their proud Afro hairstyles and wide smiles -they needed this. Harlem was going through the worst of its problems a year on from the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King. One of the interviewees describes the concert as, "like a rose coming through cement." Everyone gives 100 per cent to their performances and the crowd responds, giving it all back I wonder why this film has been ignored for so long. Black history cannot be erased. Well now thanks to director, Thompson we can share in all it's uplift. I watched this between tears of joy and wonder and loss of a past era.