{"id":9147,"date":"2021-08-03T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9147"},"modified":"2021-10-20T08:15:57","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T12:15:57","slug":"summer-of-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9147","title":{"rendered":"Summer of Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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You may have seen previews for the music documentary Summer of Soul (Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)<\/em> and think it looks worth seeing. Well, you\u2019re right! There\u2019s a lot packed in there, reclaimed from footage recorded during a series of outdoor concerts held in 1969 in Harlem\u2019s Mt. Morris Park, now called Marcus Garvey Park (trailer<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Officially titled the Harlem Cultural Festival, the concerts took place the same summer as Woodstock. But while that event has a movie, soundtrack albums, and innumerable cultural references, the Summer of Soul was at risk of being forgotten altogether. For years, the filmmakers who captured the music and sound tried vainly to acquire funding for a finished film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, they sold the rights to producers David Dinerstein and Robert Fyvolent. They approached Questlove, co-founder of the hip-hop band The Roots, house band for Jimmy Fallon\u2019s \u201cTonight Show.\u201d He was amazed at the footage of the Festival. Not only was it mesmerizing, he couldn\u2019t believe he\u2019d never heard of these concerts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s to like? The music is terrific. Each week, the concert featured a different type of music\u2014blues, soul, pop\u2014and the performers ranged from gospel choirs and Mahalia Jackson to Motown\u2019s Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, and David Ruffin, to the Fifth Dimension, to the Staple Singers to Sly and the Family Stone and on and on. The concerts were organized and mc\u2019d by singer Tony Lawrence, whom you may know as \u201cThe Continental Dreamboat\u201d (pictured) and you can justify the price of admission just to see his outfits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the music makes this a must-see, for those who lived through that era, the cultural touchstones are breathtaking. Especially interesting are the reminiscences of people\u2014performers and audience-members\u2014who were there and talk about what the festival meant to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The documentary cannot avoid the era\u2019s significant social context, which so strongly reminded of how I felt at the time and my hopes for my country. Yes, it made me feel a little old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spectacular! And coming soon, the Aretha Franklin biopic, Respect.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 99%; audiences 98%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may have seen previews for the music documentary Summer of Soul (Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) and think it looks worth seeing. Well, you\u2019re right! There\u2019s a lot packed in there, reclaimed from footage recorded during … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Summer of Soul - A don't miss trip back to the fine music of 1969, soul edition. Couldn't stop tapping my feet!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1288,58,266,57,207,104],"tags":[1889,1888],"class_list":["post-9147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-documentaries","category-history","category-movies","category-music","category-the-morgue","tag-harlem-cultural-festival","tag-summer-of-soul"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2nx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9151,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9147\/revisions\/9151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}