In the mid-2010s, popular music films dominated the Best Documentary category at the Academy Awards. “Searching for Sugar Man”, “Twenty Feet From Stardom” and “Amy” all took home the award. It was an unexpected boom: in the decades before that, non-classical music documentaries had received only scattered nominations.
All those winning films were biographies or chronicles of a scene or community. This year, however, a nominated documentary has been built around footage of musical performances: “Summer of Soul,” about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival that featured Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson, and Stevie Wonder.
“This film is different from the way the Oscars have looked at music documentaries,” said Thom Powers, Toronto International Film Festival documentary programmer and host of the Pure Nonfiction podcast. “They’re drawn to music-based movies, but the core of those movies aren’t performances, they’re different forms of storytelling.”
Ironically, in 1971, “Woodstock” was the only concert documentary to win an Academy Award, a film that cast a strong shadow over “Summer of Soul.” The events in each film took place in the same season, but as the film that captured “Three Days of Peace and Music” on Max Yasgur’s farm became a touchstone for a generation, the images from Harlem languished.
Of course, “Summer of Soul” isn’t just a concert film; the director, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, best known for his day job as a drummer for the Roots, has rejected this description of the project and the film touches on multiple topics related to the politics of the time. But with its focus on the stage, “Summer of Soul” ties directly into the tradition of quality concert documentary, a form that has seen its reputation rise and fall in the rock era.
In the 1960s, concert documentaries were respected projects. “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” which captured performances at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival from Louis Armstrong to Chuck Berry, is preserved in the National Film Registry, while Murray Lerner’s “Festival,” recorded at the 1963-66 Newport Folk Festivals , became an Oscar nominee in 1968. Documentary pioneers such as the Maysles brothers and DA Pennebaker were involved in multiple music films that defined the era.
“Those filmmakers were driven more by documentary film principles than by music,” said Benjamin J. Harbert, the author of “American Music Documentary” and an associate professor of music at Georgetown University. “They were all older than the generation they recorded. They were sort of anthropologists trying to pull us into this world of the changing America of the 1960s.”
Mia Mask, a film professor at Vassar College, noted similarities between “Summer of Soul” and films like “Gimme Shelter,” the Maysles’ chronicle of the Rolling Stones’ chaotic, disastrous appearance at the 1969 Altamont festival, or “Don’t Look Back,” Pennebaker’s document of Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour. “Like ‘Gimme Shelter,’ there isn’t a strong linear narrative, but music culture supports a whole host of other things,” she said. “And ‘Don’ Look Back’ is more episodic, it captures moments along that concert path.” In those respects, she noted, “‘Summer of Soul’ harks back to those groundbreaking documentaries.”
In a telephone interview, Thompson explained that his initial conception was closer to a conventional concert documentary. “I was like, ‘I have 40 hours of footage and this should be 90 minutes,'” he said. “I know automatically, after 25 years of doing shows, that if we get 90 minutes, that’s 14 songs. And there are way more artists than there is room for songs, so now I’m thinking in terms of a cool mixtape.
“I’m not saying I would have cut and pasted the traditional documentary,” he continued, “but I probably would have told the story of a festival in Harlem, then expanded it to Spanish Harlem and other cultures, and then to the global setting, the African artists that were there, and that would have been more or less the story.”
But when the pandemic hit in March 2020, Thompson and his team had to recalibrate. Several interviews with artists who appeared at the festival were scrapped and a new direction was needed. “It wasn’t just the concert footage anymore once we got to the pandemic and our Jenga fell down,” he said. “We had to start from the top and be creative.”
After Woodstock inevitably followed a wave of rock concert films, from Pink Floyd (in Pompeii!), David Bowie and the Grateful Dead, with the emerging phenomenon of midnight movies at local art houses providing a consistent outlet.
This trend also affected black artists, with the release of documentaries such as “Wattstax” and “Soul to Soul”, and others that were recorded but not released until many years later, such as “Soul Power” (from the music festival associated with the 1974 Muhammad Ali-George Foreman battles in the Oscar-winning “When We Were Kings”) and the Aretha Franklin gospel performance “Amazing Grace”.
This era culminated in extremes: on the one hand, there were the comedic excesses of Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same” (1976), which featured ridiculous fantasy scenes and snippets from various shows, so that the band’s outfits were sometimes in a jiffy. change. single song. On the other hand, Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz” (1978) captured the final performance of The Band’s original lineup, with a troupe of guests representing all of the group’s influences and history. “The Last Waltz” is often described as the best example of the form, but Dr. Herbert also noted that some called it “the death of the concert film”, with all the pans of rock celebrities and inside jokes and every shot planned so methodically.”
A few years later, MTV changed the relationship between audiences and music on film drastically and permanently. With the addition of series like “MTV Unplugged”, it became much more common to watch musical performances; the concert film was no longer the preserve of the pop elite. To stand out, it took something extraordinary, such as 1984’s ‘Stop Making Sense’ — a balance between the innovative staging of the Talking Heads and the radical simplicity of Jonathan Demme’s directing — or the incomparable virtuosity on display in Prince’ ‘Sign o’ the Times’ from 1987.
dr. Mask said that over time documentaries “have moved from cinéma vérité style to more narrative with more commercial appeal. We’re seeing a real shift with something like Madonna’s ‘Truth or Dare’ and those movies from the 80’s and early years.” 90 who wanted to turn the concert film upside down and turn it into something completely different, and now Beyoncé is doing her own version with projects like ‘Lemonade’ and ‘Homecoming’.”
Musicians have made concert films to capture special events (LCD Soundsystem’s 2012 “Shut Up and Play the Hits,” recorded during the group’s “farewell concert” — a goodbye that lasted until the 2015 reunion) or experimenting with technique (the Beastie Boys’ 2006 “Amazing”, composed entirely of images taken by members of the crowd). More recently, with the continued need for content from streaming services, movies by pop stars like Shawn Mendes and Ariana Grande in concert have become promotional staples.
Aside from the incorporation of local and global events in 1969, the difference to “Summer of Soul” was the way Thompson used the montage, which was based on his background as a musician and most importantly as a DJ. “When I was stuck, my producer and editor would say, ‘If this was a DJ gig, what would you do next?’” Thompson explained, adding, “If this movie was my favorite Public Enemy album or a DJ set I was doing, how would I cut and scratch and onto the next thing?”
Powers agreed that this construction ultimately sets the film apart from a traditional concert documentary: “He does this great job mixing commentary and music. You get the concert, but you also get this layer of music history so skillfully woven into the discussion.”
“Summer of Soul” comes at a contemporary moment of profound questions around race and politics, and the story it tells about the culture and context surrounding the Harlem Cultural Festival is imperative. But it’s also important – as with any great concert film – that the magnificent performances at the heart of the project are recognized on their own terms.
“It benefits from heightened political awareness, but it also allows you to see these talented people and be appreciated by a black audience,” said Dr. Mask, adding, “We’re used to turning on the news and hearing about Black Pain. ‘Summer of Soul’ gives the audience a chance to celebrate Black Joy.”
