“Summer of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” Review
Mavis Staples (Left) and Mahalia Jackson sing “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. in “Summer of Soul,” a documentary about a forgotten piece of music history.
So far, the summer of 2021 has been fairly average in terms of films with most of the blockbusters being fairly decent but the true gems of this summer season have been lower-budgeted films that have taken chances or less focused entertaining the most people and, instead, trying to craft something truly special. Among these films are “A Quiet Place Part II,” “Cruella,” “In The Heights” and “Summer of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” which is easily one of the best documentaries anyone can watch right now.
Available on Hulu, the documentary, directed by musician, drummer of The Roots and producer Amir “Questlove” Thompson, tells the story of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival: a rock, R&B, soul, gospel and jazz music festival which took place the same summer as Woodstock, was just 100 miles away from Woodstock and was filmed just like Woodstock. But, over the years, the festival faded into obscurity and the footage went unused in a basement. Thanks to the restoration of the footage, Questlove is able to show the audience the festival in its glory and, with the use of interviews, tell us just how important the music and festival was during this period of time.
Among the groups in Harlem that summer included The Staples Singers, B.B. King, The 5th Dimension, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and Mahalia Jackson and their music makes this film feel less like a documentary and more like a concert that we’re lucky we got tickets for. The impeccable restoration makes this film able to stand alongside films like “Woodstock” and “The Last Waltz” as one of the greatest music documentaries of all time.
But the film does a great job not only showing the music and making a previously unknown event common knowledge, but also weaves the music with social issues of the time including racism, the Civil Rights Movement, the increasing poverty in minority communities and brutality against African Americans.
One thing that people might find shocking is, during the summer of the festival, when the Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon, many Americans didn’t think that funneling all this money to space exploration was a good idea when homelessness, hunger and poverty seemed like more viable options. “Summer of Soul” really manages to replicate the time period to the point where our sanitized version of history quickly gets swept away.
The film is also full of beauty and must be seen for that alone. One part that brought tears to my eyes was when the musicians on stage honored the deaths of civil rights leaders, especially Martin Luther King Jr. and Harlem’s own Malcolm X, by playing King’s favorite song: “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.” Seeing Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples singing this song with all of their souls was an experience I won’t soon forget.
“Summer of Soul” is absolutely one of the best music documentaries of recent years. It’s not just a self-righteous piece on the glory days of music, it is a spotlight on a forgotten event which shows just how powerful music is. It also displays how music always has and always will be interwoven with social justice and become the language of the downtrodden and oppressed. In these times of protest and societal change, it definitely pays to look into the past and see how it parallels the present and “Summer of Soul” does exactly that.
