On June 19-20, the Guild Cinema hosted a special showing of “Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not be Televised)” in honor of Juneteenth, a federal holiday commemorating the day that news of Emancipation reached Texas — the last state to be informed.
“Summer of Soul” focused on the Harlem Cultural Festival, a free summer music and cultural fest that was held during the summer of 1969 in Harlem in New York City. It was hosted by Tony Lawrence and filmed by Hal Tulchin. The festival was recorded, but the footage sat untouched and unseen for more than 50 years, until directors Questlove and Hal Tulchin combined the recording with testimonies from artists, organizers and attendees to create “Summer of Soul.”
The archival footage looked beautiful, with vibrant colors, clear visuals and stunning audio quality befitting a beautiful celebration of black culture, togetherness and survival.
Artists featured included Stevie Wonder, The 5th Dimension, Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone and David Ruffin, as well as comedian Moms Mabley and other performers.
The Harlem Cultural Festival occurred during a fraught time. 1969 was the height of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Space Race and a major drug epidemic. The festival itself used the Black Panthers as a security team. The previous spring, Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. The one of the last people to speak to King, according to the documentary, was blues and gospel artist Ben Branch, who played King’s favorite song, “Precious Lord” at the festival in a heart wrenching tribute.
One attendee of the Harlem Cultural Festival interviewed for the documentary, Dorinda Drake said, “Harlem was heaven for us.”
And audiences, even fifty years later, can easily see why and feel the same.
Also attending the festival was then-New York Mayor John Lindsay, a “liberal Republican” who supported labor and Civil Rights movements and was instrumental in producing The Kerner Report — the document that formally identified racism against the Black community as the cause of the riots in the mid-to late 60s. He was a major supporter of the festival and spoke at the event.
The footage of the Harlem Cultural Fest had been forgotten in the face of Woodstock, which happened the same summer and a perceived lack of interest in a “black” music fest. Seeing the footage revived had a profound impact.
Upon seeing the footage again, attendee Musa Jackson said “You know, it’s funny — You put memories away, and you don’t realize... Sometimes you don’t even know if they’re real. So it’s almost confirmation that what I knew was real.”
Keif Henley, owner of Guild Cinema said they were excited to air “Summer of Soul,” which they previously had not had distribution rights to.
“It’s just the music,” Henley said. “I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to show something we’ve wanted to show for quite a while.”
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Addison Fulton is the culture editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
