Summer of Soul soundtrack
Questlove’s Summer of Soul was one of 2021’s most important films. The hip-hop artist unearthed a trove of footage from 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival. It was a series of summer days in a New York park, a hundred miles distant but light years away from the music fest that stole the spotlight that summer— Woodstock.
The soundtrack album crackles with the energy of performances by (mostly) Black artists surrounded by a multi-generational audience. The album opens on the upbeat with some Chambers Brothers’s soul, delves into rocking blues with B.B. King, waxes pop with The 5th Dimension, heads to church with the Edwin Hawkins Singers, picks up an Afro-Caribbean tempo from Mongo Santamaria, rockets to its own space with Sly & The Family Stone … it’s a showcase of African American music as the ‘60s ended. Mostly hopeful notes were sounded as the artists looked forward to a future that has yet to materialize.
