Summer of Soul: The Forgotten ‘Black Woodstock’ In New Documentary

Summer of Soul is a new documentary film created with the intention of ‘righting a serious cultural wrong’ that highlights the forgotten 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, referred to as the ‘Black Woodstock’. Directed by The Roots drummer Ahmir Thompson, who is best known under the name “Questlove”, the documentary recounts the festival and highlights “the all-too-common erasure of Black history”.

Summer of Soul: The Harlem Cultural Festival

In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary—part music film, part historical record created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was never seen and largely forgotten–until now.

Summer of Soul shines a light on the importance of history to our spiritual well-being and stands as a testament to the healing power of music during times of unrest, both past and present. The feature includes never-before-seen concert performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Ray Baretto, Abbey Lincoln & Max Roach and more. #SummerofSoulMovie

Questlove explained how two film producers, Robert Fyvolent and David Dinerstein, approached him in 2017 with 40 hours of footage from the festival, which was held over six Sundays from June to August 1969. The Harlem Cultural Festival was not widely broadcast at the time, with only two shows of one-hour highlights being aired on a local New York television channel.

Speaking to the BBC, Questlove explained how the project came about:

“The Harlem Cultural Festival was an event thrown by two gentlemen, Tony Lawrence, who booked the acts, and by Hal Tulchin, who filmed it. They somehow managed to gather some of the mavericks of their day. We’re talking about Stevie Wonder. Nina Simone, Sly and Family Stone, Ray Barretto, Olatunji, Hugh Masekela, Edwin Hawkins Singers, BB King, comedians, politicians, everybody was there. The event is preserved professionally on tape and not one producer or outlet is interested in seeing the footage or making it worldwide-known or distributing. So, what winds up happening is that this film just sits in the basement for 50 years.

I’d say it took me five months, just to live with the footage. Five months of just constantly having these monitors in my house in every room, my house, my kitchen, my bathroom, my bedroom, I kept it on 24-hour loop. That’s all I watched. And I kept notes on anything that gave me goosebumps. And what I wound up doing was curating it, like I curate a show or DJ gig.”

Summer of Soul – Reception and acclaim

So far, the Summer of Soul documentary has already won the 2021 Sundance Documentary Grand Jury Prize, and has gained widespread attention. As well as being centred on celebrating the shift in Black identity that occurred in 1969, the film pinpoints what was happening during those weeks of the festival, noting the ‘cultural overlap’ with the famously publicised Woodstock Festival whereby only one band, Sly and the Family Stone, played both, while Jimi Hendrix played Woodstock and was turned down by the Harlem Cultural Festival.

Questlove has said that since the film’s reception, he has been approached by numerous people with similar stories in the possession of event archive footage that has been buried and forgotten over the course of time. He is hopeful that Summer of Soul may actually be the first of many reveals in this area.

Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not be Televised), will be released in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on 16th July, and exclusively on Star on Disney+ on 30^th July.

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