1968 was a tough year for New York City, what with the garbage strike and the Harlem Riots (which killed more people than the riot about whether it was acceptable to wear a straw boater after September 15, and almost as many as the one about who was the best Shakespearean actor in town). In 1969, New York's best looking (and possibly worst performing, unless you count the one who went around in his wife's clothes) mayor agreed that a music festival in Harlem was preferable, so the City (and Maxwell House) bankrolled a series of four weekend concerts in Harlem. They even filmed it.
Never heard of it? Neither had I. Woodstock sucked all the air out of such goings on that summer. People know about Woodstock, Monterrey, and Altamont because of the sex and successful movies being made of them. The film for this one sat in a vault for fifty years because no one wanted to edit and release it. Were the rights secured? I don't know. How would you market it, with Nina Simone reading poetry about destroying the White Man's property? So it sat unedited and unreleased, while the people who had been there as adults died, and those who had been there as children grew uncertain about whether it had ever happened.
Except that now it has been edited and released, and it is an amazing collection of music, Black history, Black Pride, B. B. King telling us why he sang the blues, Mahalia Jackso singing.... well, who cares what she's singing? Plus Sly and the Family Stone, The Fifth Dimension (I didn't even know they were Black), Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight..... well the list goes on and on.
It goes on a little too long to be absolutely cinematic. It starts off with some amazing energy, and the first hour or so keeps it up in a whirlwind of editing by Joshua Pearson. Then.... well, there follows eight or ten segments that look like The Final Act, to be followed by a coda of commentary, only to be followed by another final act..... which dissipates the energy. Every act is great, and I don't know what I would cut. However, but the end I was exhausted.
Still. Great music. Great commentary. And if they want to televise it, they need to cut out Miss Simone's poetry slam.
Never heard of it? Neither had I. Woodstock sucked all the air out of such goings on that summer. People know about Woodstock, Monterrey, and Altamont because of the sex and successful movies being made of them. The film for this one sat in a vault for fifty years because no one wanted to edit and release it. Were the rights secured? I don't know. How would you market it, with Nina Simone reading poetry about destroying the White Man's property? So it sat unedited and unreleased, while the people who had been there as adults died, and those who had been there as children grew uncertain about whether it had ever happened.
Except that now it has been edited and released, and it is an amazing collection of music, Black history, Black Pride, B. B. King telling us why he sang the blues, Mahalia Jackso singing.... well, who cares what she's singing? Plus Sly and the Family Stone, The Fifth Dimension (I didn't even know they were Black), Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight..... well the list goes on and on.
It goes on a little too long to be absolutely cinematic. It starts off with some amazing energy, and the first hour or so keeps it up in a whirlwind of editing by Joshua Pearson. Then.... well, there follows eight or ten segments that look like The Final Act, to be followed by a coda of commentary, only to be followed by another final act..... which dissipates the energy. Every act is great, and I don't know what I would cut. However, but the end I was exhausted.
Still. Great music. Great commentary. And if they want to televise it, they need to cut out Miss Simone's poetry slam.