The film “Summer of Soul

In August of the summer of 1969, music history was made not just seventy kilometers southwest of Woodstock.

Something is also happening in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park), Harlem, New York, which those who were there still perceive as a life-guiding beacon to this day.

But to this day, comparatively few people know about it: The Harlem Cultural Festival celebrated African-American music every Sunday from June 29 to August 24, 1969.

Stevie Wonder, who next to music titans like BB King, Sly and the Family Stone and Mahalia Jackson played the crowd in front of the stage into ecstasy, says about the time: “69 was the year in which the Negro died and the black man was born. "

Axel Weidemann

Editor in the features section.

• Follow I follow

But unlike Woodstock, this festival did not burn itself into the world's cultural memory. Although the broadcaster Metromedia Channel 5 (WNEW-TV) did one-hour cuts, the majority of the material recorded by the team of director Hal Tulchin never found its way into full-length film formats in order to become a classic of the music film. That opportunity is now more than fifty years late. It can be seen as a lucky fate that the forty hours of material about the producer Robert Fyvolent found its way into the hands of the jack-of-all-trades Questlove from the hip-hop group “The Roots”. He made a documentary music film out of it, which shines with its precisely worked out interplay of editing and sound, but also gives Tulchin's material space,so that it can develop its full force.

Tulchin drew this from a proximity that is seldom seen in recordings of this kind: while singing turns into gospel, trance, and ecstasy, Tulchin's cameramen bring the artists' faces up close to the lens. We see the sweat, the layers of make-up, the tightly closed eyes, the tears of the artists who transform their joy but also their anger into music. However, Tulchin and Questlove also show what happens to the audience. So many faces, so many ways of reacting to what you hear, or to the fact that you are being filmed - and quickly dragging the little things into the picture. The age-old musical pattern of call and answer is captured in images. In between, above and below: discreetly integrated images of contemporary witnesses, musicians, political events, black everyday life.

At the beginning, the visitor Musa Jackson is asked: “Do you remember the Harlem Cultural Festival in the summer of 69?”.

The camera now points to the face on which you can see how Jackson is traveling back at this moment - instead of his answer, the first uncommented pictures of the venue come.

Jackson later says, "I've never seen so many of us at once."

"Hear my cry, hear my call."

Not only Stevie Wonder describes the year 1969 as a turning point. The whole film tries to show how blacks fought for a new self-confidence during this time. Gone are the days when you tried to be whiter than the whites in a suit and tie without ever being able to please them. In the beginning there are those who died along the way. The film draws a line of death from John F. Kennedy (1963, Dallas) to Martin Luther King (1968, Memphis).

One of the strongest scenes is the moment when civil rights activist Jesse Jackson asks “Sister Mahalia Jackson” to commemorate “Dr. King ”to sing his favorite gospel“ Take My Hand, Precious Lord ”. Singer Mavis Staples (Pops Staples & The Staple Singers) recalls: "Mahalia came up to me and said, 'I don't feel so good today, would you help me?'" She helped - and how. In the film, Jackson previously told the story of the day his friend “Dr. King ”was shot. We see an audience that does not seem upset, but rather gripped by the kind of tiredness that elicits painstakingly suppressed anger and sadness. Then Mavis Staples begins to sing. “Hear my cry, hear my call.” Mahalia Jackson joins them. Both raise their fists to the sky.For a moment the camera only has these clenched fists in view and although you can't see the faces, you get a rough idea of ​​the glowing pain the black community is singing about its soul.

Nina Simone is radical, full of creative anger, which however does not shrink from annihilation. Like a force of nature, she comes over the audience to ask, in the words of the poet, musician and rap pioneer David Nelson (The Last Poets): "Are you ready to smash things and burn down buildings?"

Another trick that succeeds here is not only to combine the justified anger of a discriminated minority with all-encompassing music and images that pluck the heart muscle fibers of everyone who has “soul” after a few bars, but also en passant the megalomania of the new ones to comment on white, toy rocket-riding cowboys of our era: The moon landing on July 20, 1969 is cut together in a unique way with the song of the Staple Singers "It's been a Change". When asked about the moon landing, a visitor explains completely disinterested: “Forget the moon! Let's distribute the cash (the money for the cost of the space program) to a few poor souls from Harlem. ”As if he already knew that fifty years later an eccentric like Jeff Bezos is blowing his money into the sky to fulfill a dream .

So with “Summer of Soul” succeeds what poetry can do in its strongest moments: to condense a jumble of complex issues into a key moment that unlocks new realities.

The film ends with Musa Jackson's words: “How beautiful it was”.

Almost like an interesting CD, however, it is worthwhile to let the credits run a little longer.

Summer of Soul

runs on Disney +.