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The Spectacular Story of Harlem’s Black Woodstock
Questlove’s new documentary ‘Summer of Soul’ is an in-depth look into the soundtrack behind Black American life during the fiery summer of 1969
The year 1969 was one of those touchstone periods in United States history. As the ’60s came to a close, the worlds of American science, politics, and music, to name just a few, would never be the same. The decade produced a marine coast of watershed moments. For people of color, though, many were unforgettable tragedies. The most powerful advocates and heroes of the disenfranchised — along with their hope — were killed.
The first half of the 1960s saw President John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X plotted against and assassinated. In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy announced to the country that Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered. Two months later, on the brink of becoming presidential balm for a nation in great pain, Kennedy met the same fate. Fred Hampton didn’t survive the close of the ’60s, but the Black Panther chairman lived to see the summer of 1969.
Although the entire nation was on fire, few burned and fumed more than inner-city Black people living through the middle of the decade’s final year. To fully comprehend the racial temperature of the final summer of the ’60s is to transport yourself back to its microcosm of metropolitan Black life: Harlem. Harlemites, like their bredren and sistren in locales like Detroit and South Central, were in desperate need of food, thought, and prayer. Over several successive weeks, all three necessities were delivered in a most powerful and shared form: soul music. The upcoming documentary Summer of Soul — the directorial debut of music master Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (out July 2)— enters the library of pivotal Black history as the sole captain on this musical voyage.
Through hours of distilled half-century-old archival footage, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) unearths the buried story of a monumental-yet-unpublicized weekly outdoor concert series called the Harlem Cultural Festival, which took place during the summer of ’69 in Harlem’s Mount Morris Park (since renamed Marcus Garvey Park). Summer not only offers never-before-seen stage performances by Black…
