Summer of Soul is an incredibly moving documentary celebrating Black history, culture, and the significance of the Harlem Cultural Festival that took place in 1969. Available now on DVD and streaming on most services.
“Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson presents a powerful documentary about an event in the summer of 1969 that celebrated Black history, culture and fashion. Not far from Woodstock, NY, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King and more took to the stage in a transformative experience.”
In 1969, the Harlem Cultural Festival took place in Mount Morris Park in New York City. Over 300,000 people attended this free concert, with the entire music festival being filmed, but never distributed or shown, and it sat in a basement for 50 years unseen. This footage was salvaged, restored, and included in this documentary highlighting its importance in history, culture, and the lives of everyone in attendance, that gives us a glimpse of a proud Black culture and its struggles to express itself in oppressive times.
The documentary itself is extremely well-made, intercutting footage from the festival and the musical acts, along with interviews from surviving musicians, leaders, and attendees remembering the significance and impact the show made on their lives. While learning more about Black culture and specifically the hardships for the people living in Harlem and surrounding low-income neighborhoods, the music from the festival shows that despite all the oppression and racial tensions, some of the most beautiful music in human history was created. Summer of Soul brings this to light, and during a time when Black culture and history is in danger of being forgotten, it’s an important step in the right direction to celebrate, remember, and experience this important moment in history that otherwise may have been left to collect dust in a basement for another 50 years.
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) will have a different impact on everyone who views it. Seeing the reactions from those people who were in attendance as children, never having seen footage from it in their lifetimes, thinking it may have all been a dream, was incredibly moving. The reactions from the crowd during the festival in regards to the moon landing that took place while the festival was going on were particularly interesting, as impressed or proud as they were to live during those events, a universal theme was that those funds or public interest could have been better spent in feeding and housing struggling people in Harlem, and all throughout America. While over 50 years have passed since those events, with incredible progress made in social reform, there is still a lot of work to be done.
We were given a digital code to review the film, which is available on most streaming platforms, including Hulu and Disney+. Despite the focus on digital releases, this documentary does have a physical DVD release, but sadly no Blu-ray. High-Definition is definitely the way to go watching this documentary, in whatever way you have available to you, as the 50 year old footage particularly looks incredibly well-preserved/restored. Released earlier this month, Summer of Soul is highly recommended!
