At the crowded outdoor music festival, the PA announcer called attention to a lost wallet. There was no brown acid to worry the concertgoers. And by the way, the concertgoers included toddlers, teenagers, young adults, parents and their parents. Although only a hundred miles distant and a month before Woodstock, the Harlem Cultural Festival drew 300,000 people into Harlem’s Mount Morris Park for a concert series with star power. It was filmed with as many cameras and as much competence as the crew that documented Woodstock, but the producer could find no one to release it until now.
In his directorial debut, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Ahmir Questlove Thompson edited portions of that film, shot in the summer of 1969, adding contemporary interviews with musicians and audience members, along with impeccably chosen archival footage to put the Harlem Cultural Festival in context. 1969 bristled with problems and possibility. It was the year when “Black” became a positive word, displacing “Colored” and “Negro.” It was a time of upheaval, hope and anxiety. The assassinations of the Kennedys, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were open wounds, the Vietnam War was on television every night and the new president, Richard Nixon, appeared unsympathetic to civil rights—and yet, the ‘60s had seen progress on many fronts. The future promised brighter days.
The acts booked for the festival were diverse, predominantly Black but embracing the Latino culture of East (“Spanish”) Harlem and including Jewish jazzman Herbie Mann (an explanation would have been interesting). Performers included Stevie Wonder, breaking into a sun-bursting smile behind his piano, and encompassed funky rock from The Chambers Brothers; the blues of B.B. King; the stomping spiritual blues of Pops Staple and The Staple Singers; lanky David Ruffin crooning “My Girl”; the Motown precision drill of Gladys Knight and The Pips; Sonny Sharrock’s avant-funk; Afro-jazz from Hugh Masekela and Max Roach; and Ray Barretto’s salsa, which put a Puerto Rican accent on African polyrhythm.
Nina Simone was charismatic on “Backlash Blues,” directing her scorn at whiny white supremacists, as well as her hymn-like “Young, Gifted and Black.” Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward gave ecstatic gospel testimonials, practically singing in tongues, while the Edwin Hawkins Singers, wearing avocado green choir robes, sang “Oh Happy Days” with joyful restraint.
There was even a Black ventriloquist with a Black dummy, an African dance troupe and Jesse Jackson reflecting on the night MLK died. And then there was Sly and The Family Stone, taking it higher with his pan-racial, border-melting high-energy party jam. The band’s lineup raised eyebrows: in 1969 women didn’t play trumpet in public and whites didn’t drum for an R&B group. In a different mode, The 5th Dimension straddled cultural divisions with the hippie mysticism of “Aquarius”—before “taking it to church” with their soulful coda, “Let the Sunshine In.”
The incredible roster was brought together by Harlem lounge singer and entrepreneur Tony Lawrence—who pulled strings with the city of New York and hustled General Mills for sponsorship—and echoed the conflicting currents of the time. The “harmony and understanding” of the 5th Dimension contrasted with Simon’s explicit contemplation of violence. The shoulder-to-shoulder crowd was mostly Black with a little brown and scarcely any white. Beret-wearing Black Panthers provided security and the NYPD stood back and watched the show.
Unlike the chaos and mud at the adventure for affluent middle-class kids called Woodstock, the Harlem Cultural Festival was a multi-generational party where everyone walked home healthy and in good spirits. Vendors sold collard greens, not brown acid, in a throng that included women in big hats clutching Bibles and dancing to the music.
Questlove deftly wraps the music and crowd scenes in an entertaining history lesson that asks the question: Why was this marvelous event cancelled, like much of the African American story, overlooked and eclipsed by the bogus mythology of Woodstock? What does that say about America?
