Summer of Soul: Not-to-be-missed musical moment is not to be dismissed as 'The Black Woodstock'

By Jim Slotek

Rating: A

A film filled with memorable and moving musical moments, Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could NOT be Televised) once had the working title Black Woodstock. Happily, at some point, a rethink happened.

Summer of Soul, its footage rescued from storage after more than a half-century and turned into a must-see feature by director Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, records a musical earthquake that happened at the same time as all those mostly white kids got back to the garden 100 miles upstate.

Sly Stone at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival in Summer of Soul

But the tone, context and vibe spoke to another experience entirely. The 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival was a summer of outdoor concerts of up to 50,000 at a time at Harlem’s Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park), featuring legends of pop (The 5th Dimension, Stevie Wonder), jazz (Hugh Masekela, Abbey Lincoln), blues (B.B. King), gospel (Mahalia Jackson, The Staple Singers, the Edwin Hawkins Singers) and singular voices of race and rage like Nina Simone. It was alternately intensely hot and torrentially rainy. It was a destination for families. There was street food whose images still entice today.

Though Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr.’s 5th Dimension sang about the pending Age of Aquarius, there was apprehension in the air. As Rev. Jesse Jackson put it, the election of Richard Nixon threatened to move Black people from, “dealing with White liberals” to “dealing with White America at its worst.” 

(Politicians found their way to the stage on a regular basis. I laughed out loud to hear the Kennedy-handsome New York mayor John Lindsay introduced to the crowd as a “blue-eyed soul brother.”)

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Of course, the other big deal in the summer of ’69 was “Whitey on the Moon.”as defined by Gil Scott-Heron (whose poem The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is riffed in the movie’s title), And there is indeed a segment where attendees are interviewed about Apollo 11, and politely express their indifference to the event, many saying what they were seeing onstage was much more important.

What happened onstage was certainly unforgettable. Jackson, the Queen of Gospel, was feeling poorly and asked for the then young Mavis Staples to help her out. The duet then turned competitive in the best way, with a bit of mike-hogging and two voices for the ages reaching up to the heavens.

Stevie Wonder serves notice that “Little” Stevie Wonder is no more, commanding the stage at the piano and on drums.

Gladys Knight & the Pips? Sly and the Family Stone? The Chambers Brothers? Just, wow.

And, in current footage, an emotional McCoo and Davis watch their breakout performance and remember the racial politics of being pop artists and “not Black enough.

“You can’t color a sound, you can only sing it,” McCoo says.

Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could NOT be Televised). Directed by Ahmir-Khalib Thompson (a.k.a. Questlove). Starring Sly & the Family Stone, Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Staples Singers and many more. Debuting Friday July 2 in theatres where open and on on Disney+ Star.