On SUMMER OF SOUL

 I watched the Kennedy Center Honors telecast on CBS this week. It was terrific. One of the amazing artists being honored was Joni Mitchell. She did not appear at Woodstock in 1969 but she sang about it. Archive footage of the Woodstock music festival was shown. Near the end of the show, the audience erupted in joy when it learned that the last music performance would be done by Stevie Wonder. As usual, he thrilled the audience.

I was a kid in Los Angeles, but I heard a lot about Woodstock on the radio, on network TV news, and there was plenty of coverage in glossy, national magazines. Plus, there was the 1970 documentary called WOODSTOCK.

Woodstock was in upstate New York. That same summer, 100 miles away from Woodstock, there was a hell of a fabulous music festival in Harlem called the Harlem Cultural Festival. An estimated 300,000 peaceful people attended. Top talent appeared onstage. The opening act was Stevie Wonder.

Like Woodstock, the Harlem Cultural Festival show was visually recorded. But no one showed the interest in it equal to the mainstream national interest there was in Woodstock. The videotapes of the Harlem Cultural Festival went unseen for 50 years -- until musician/director Questlove, the bandleader on the TONIGHT Show starring Jimmy Fallon, took a major interest in that landmark 1969 event of soul music and Black history. His music documentary, SUMMER OF SOUL, should land Questlove an Oscar nomination. Besides Stevie Wonder, some of the other performers were Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, The 5th Dimension, B.B. King, Herbie Mann, Mahalia Jackson and Nina Simone. Also present was Rev. Jesse Jackson who told a heartbreaking account of the casual conversation he was having with Dr. Martin Luther King the minute King was shot.

Black people in Harlem needed this musical celebration and emotional release in that Summer of '69. From 1963 to 1968, there had been the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King and presidential hopeful, Senator Robert F. Kennedy. There was the Vietnam War. SUMMER OF SOUL has observations from folks who were at the festival, performers who were at the festival, people involved with taping the show and there are observations from the extraordinary Greg Tate. The acclaimed and respected Black culture writer/critic died early this month. The gifted Lin-Manuel Miranda and his dad talk about the wonderful Puerto Rican/Latino presence and influence in Harlem. SUMMER OF SOUL is an exciting doc about music, about change, about Black history.

This is a joyous, tune-filled, highly informative and still relevant documentary. It also made me angry that so much Black history is and has been purposely overlooked in America. I highly recommend SUMMER OF SOUL. When you watch it, stay through the end credits to see a minute of a dude onstage trying to throw shade on Stevie Wonder.

Merry Christmas!