I feel like the narrative around Summer of Soul has kind of seeped into the public consciousness. I hope that’s true at least. Anyway, I won’t spend much time on set-up. In the summer of 1969, a somewhat significant year in terms of politics and world events, you might say, the Harlem Cultural Festival gathered together a veritable who’s who of black musical artists to create six straight weekends of unbelievably stacked concerts across a myriad of genres. Then, despite the massive success of the Woodstock documentary, the film from the Harlem Cultural Festival, totalling over forty hours of concert footage, basically got shoved in a closet for fifty years. Until Questlove got his hands on it and whittled it down to a two hour super-cut of astonishingly great music, performed by some of the greatest musical artists of all time at the height of their powers.
And, look, it’s probably my favorite musical documentary ever. I mean, I haven’t seen them all, so I hesitate to say it’s “the best,” but I can tell you that there’s not a single musical performance here that is less than great and, you know, even Woodstock and The Last Waltz had a couple of duds, right? This is just an amazing experience. I’ve seen it twice now; I was lucky enough to see it in the theater and then I’ve since watched it again at home and it’s just remarkable. The sheer breadth of talent on display here basically speaks for itself: the smooth Motown of David Ruffin doing My Girl; 5th Dimension doing Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In; the stabbing electric blues of B.B. King; Mahalia Jackson & Mavis Staples absolutely destroying on an impassioned gospel duet of Precious Lord, Take My Hand; The Edwin Hawkins Singers doing Oh Happy Day; Gladys Knight & the Pips doing Heard It Through the Grapevine; Sly and the Family Stone grinding out Sing a Simple Song & Everyday People; Herbie Mann, Ray Barretto & Max Roach bringing the jazz bona fides; Nina Simone just being the absolute queen of everything and . . . and a nineteen-year-old Stevie Wonder just going absolutely nuts in an extended keyboard solo and an extended drum solo. These are the longer performances that we get to see/hear basically in full. There are also a lot of snippets and excerpts of other performances featuring everything from African drum groups with full-on, full-body costumes to a stand-up comedian with a ventriloquist dummy.
With this music as the backbone of the film, Questlove takes us in a lot of different directions as he explores the social and political context in which this concert happened. The section, featuring an extended speech by a very young Jesse Jackson, about the assassination of MLK is powerful and moving. Likewise, Questlove finds a lot of emotional hooks in interviews with both attendees and performers at the festival. A scene where two surviving members of the 5th Dimension watch footage of their performance at the festival for the very first time, fifty years after it was filmed, is just magical and beautiful. There’s no way to really pick the things I liked best about this movie; it’s just too strong across the board. Like I said, there’s not a song I’d cut. I did really love the section on gospel music, a subgenre I love that is too often ignored. And Nina Simone is an incredibly strong figure to use to start wrapping the movie up; the sheer power of her presence, her body language, her facial expressions, even the way she plays the piano, the power of her voice – she’s an absolutely ferocious performer. But, taken all in all, this entire movie really is ferocious, intense, vibrant, a marathon of chill-bumps and jaw-drops that’ll put rhythm in your bones, a smile on your face and a tear in your eye. I just can’t imagine anyone not loving this and I can’t recommend it highly enough. 4 stars.
tl;dr – fantastic music documentary about Harlem Culture Fest of 1969 features an astounding line up of great musicians at the top of their game; not a single song here is a dud. 4 stars.