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manifested in a sea of faces and bodies—
can reach an artist, perhaps moving him
or her to tears.
Summer of Soul, which broke the sales
record for documentary acquisitions
out of Sundance after winning major
awards there in January, is Questlove’s
account of a series of concerts known as
the Harlem Cultural Festival, held during
a six-week span in the summer of 1969.
The location was Harlem’s Mount Mor-
ris Park—now known as Marcus Gar-
vey Park—and the turnout for these free
shows was spectacular. A festival pro-
ducer and fi lmmaker named Hal Tulchin
fi lmed the performances, resulting in 40
hours’ worth of material. But Tulchin
couldn’t interest anyone in releasing the
footage commercially, and it languished
until Questlove rescued it. He has art-
fully assembled that footage here, com-
bining it with present-day accounts from
people who were there, either perform-
ing or watching from the audience.
IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE—or maybe
it isn’t—that a festival with so many
showstoppers has eluded mass atten-
tion until now. A very young Gladys
Knight, already possessed of a very big
voice, storms the stage with her Pips.
Stevie Wonder, at the time only 19 and
recently scored a No. 1 record with their
fl oaty medley of “Aquarius” and “Let
the Sunshine In” from Hair. A few years
earlier, they’d released an album keyed
to another huge hit, Jimmy Webb’s “Up,
Up and Away.” The album’s cover fea-
tured the group huddled together —
wonderfully, ridiculously —in the basket
of a hot-air balloon.
In one of the most moving sequences
of Summer of Soul, the 5th Dimension’s
Marilyn McCoo, interviewed in the
present day, explains why she and the
other members of the group—includ-
ing her husband, the thor-
oughly charming Billy
Davis Jr., who also appears
in the fi lm—were so happy
to be invited to perform at
the festival. Among Black
audiences, McCoo says,
there was a sense that the
5th Dimension “weren’t
Black enough.” It meant a
great deal to her and her
fellow musicians to play
before, and feel embraced
by, her own people.
As McCoo and Davis watch younger
versions of themselves on a screen that
we can’t see, McCoo says—betraying
the shyest trace of a tear—“We were so
happy to be there.” And so the dream
circuit between audience and artist is
complete, so cosmically whole, it’s im-
possible to tell where one begins and
the other leaves off. □dressed in a killer apricot and choco-
late suit-and-shirt combo, starts a num-
ber on the keyboards before wending
his way over to the drums—because he
can play those too, so why not? Sly and
the Family Stone breeze onto the stage
like a gust of psychedelic butterfl ies.
Mahalia Jackson, dressed in a hot pink
caftan like a heaven-sent cloud, soars
high with Martin Luther King Jr.’s be-
loved “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,”
a young Mavis Staples, awestruck, sing-
ing at her side.
All of these acts are extraordinary.
But the real miracle of
Summer of Soul is the
audience, vast and var-
ied and nearly all Black:
whole families had come
to the park, picnics in
tow. We see giddy tod-
dlers wriggling and jig-
gling, taking to heart Sly
Stone’s entreaty to dance
to the music. Some young
women wear neat shift
dresses and straightened
tresses; others splash out in African
prints, their hair natural, a style that
had only recently become popular, in
parallel with the Black Power move-
ment. This audience, standing together
and fi lled with joy, was marking the
creation of a new world, one that’s still
coming into being half a century later.
One of the festival’s younger, groov-
ier acts was the 5th Dimension, who’dIt’s hard to
believe—or
maybe it isn’t—
that a festival
with so many
showstoppers
has eluded
mass attention
until now△
Rubin and McCartney illuminate
Beatles magic in the Hulu docuseries
McCartney 3,2,1