Black. It is the color that absorbs all colors, the shade that holds the sun's warmth as it moves east to west. It is the color of a people, not just African but Caribbean, Middle Eastern, American, and more. But it is also music: the color at the center of the trumpet's brass ring, the shadow that fills the club when the lights get low and the party begins. Over the decades, Latin music has built a reputation for being wildly popular, no doubt in part due to its danceable nature. But what often gets lost in the conversation is the contribution that Black Latines had in cultivating the sound that, today, many of us regard as uniquely "Latin."
As a kid, I was guilty of just that. It wasn't until years later that I came to understand the importance of claiming my Afro-Puerto Rican heritage and how it shaped...
As a kid, I was guilty of just that. It wasn't until years later that I came to understand the importance of claiming my Afro-Puerto Rican heritage and how it shaped...
- 2/27/2024
- by Miguel Machado
- Popsugar.com
A few tracks into the soundtrack of Questlove’s music-fest documentary, an emcee introduces the next performer, David Ruffin. A year after being bounced out of the Temptations, the notoriously troubled Ruffin already sounds nostalgic: “I’d like to go back to the olden days,” he says, with a glimmer of humor, as his backup band starts into the Temps’ “My Girl.”
Only five years had passed since that hit had conquered the world, but as Ruffin himself may have gleaned, Black music had grown exponentially in that short time.
Only five years had passed since that hit had conquered the world, but as Ruffin himself may have gleaned, Black music had grown exponentially in that short time.
- 1/28/2022
- by David Browne
- Rollingstone.com
Twenty-two years ago, no one could avoid “Smooth,” that unlikely combo of Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas that won multiple Grammys, sold millions, and haunted all of us at weddings. But neither man seemed to take the idea of a sequel all too seriously. “We always talked about doing something,” Thomas says. “Usually I’d get a text from Carlos at 3 in the morning with Otis Redding doing ‘Day Tripper’ and Carlos saying, ‘We’re gonna do this song!’ It was always two guys drinking too much wine and having...
- 8/18/2021
- by David Browne
- Rollingstone.com
The big Summer holiday weekend is finally upon us, so it’s getaway time. Ah, but what if you’re still a bit leery of travel, what with that “variant’ sweeping through several states? Well, there’s always the movies, though that loud, dim-witted auto-atrocity is still taking up a lot of multiplex space. This new release offers another type of getaway, one of location and time. It can be a bit confusing, but this feature is somehow old and new. And we won’t need Doc Brown’s DeLorean to immerse ourselves in the ozone of long ago NYC, 52 years ago to be exact. That sizzling Summer was the time of the Harlem Cultural Festival, spread out over several Sundays. Iconic pop culture entertainers performed before delighted audiences for free. Unfortunately, another music fest, about a hundred miles away in upstate New York, got all the media attention. Luckily it was all recorded,...
- 7/1/2021
- by Jim Batts
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
A version of this review originally ran in January during our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
If you had walked up to Harlem’s Mount Morris Park, on just about any given Sunday in the summer of 1969, you’d have run in to a crowd. There would be vendors selling food, kids running around, families grilling meat, folks lounging in the sun. You’d hear laughter, and chatter, and the sound of a good time. You’d smell what one resident recalls, decades later, as the combined scent of...
If you had walked up to Harlem’s Mount Morris Park, on just about any given Sunday in the summer of 1969, you’d have run in to a crowd. There would be vendors selling food, kids running around, families grilling meat, folks lounging in the sun. You’d hear laughter, and chatter, and the sound of a good time. You’d smell what one resident recalls, decades later, as the combined scent of...
- 6/25/2021
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
One of the biggest sensations to emerge out of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival was the documentary feature debut of music virtuoso Questlove, “Summer of Soul.” This joyous chronicle of the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969 — known as “the Black Woodstock” — won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the festival’s Documentary section. It was quickly scooped up by Searchlight Pictures, which will release the film in theaters and simultaneously on Hulu on July 2. As Questlove served as the music producer for the 93rd Academy Awards this year, it was fitting the studio dropped the first trailer during the ceremony. Check it out below.
The debut from Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, who has been the drummer of hip-hop band The Roots for over three decades, serves up a different slice of music history in the pivotal year of 1969. During the same summer as Woodstock, a different music festival took place 100 miles away.
The debut from Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, who has been the drummer of hip-hop band The Roots for over three decades, serves up a different slice of music history in the pivotal year of 1969. During the same summer as Woodstock, a different music festival took place 100 miles away.
- 4/26/2021
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
“Summer of Soul,” Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s acclaimed documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, has been acquired by the Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures in a deal that also will bring the film to Hulu.
The documentary, which won both the Grand Jury prize and Audience award at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, served as the directorial debut for Thompson, who has been the drummer of hip-hop band The Roots for over three decades. “Summer of Soul” will have a theatrical release, will stream in the United States on Hulu, and will stream internationally on Star and Star+. Premiere dates have not been announced.
“I’m so honored to be allowed to manifest my dreams after all this time,” Thompson said in a statement. “This is truly an honor. ‘Summer Of Soul’ is a passion project and to have it resonate with so many people on so many levels has been incredibly rewarding.
The documentary, which won both the Grand Jury prize and Audience award at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, served as the directorial debut for Thompson, who has been the drummer of hip-hop band The Roots for over three decades. “Summer of Soul” will have a theatrical release, will stream in the United States on Hulu, and will stream internationally on Star and Star+. Premiere dates have not been announced.
“I’m so honored to be allowed to manifest my dreams after all this time,” Thompson said in a statement. “This is truly an honor. ‘Summer Of Soul’ is a passion project and to have it resonate with so many people on so many levels has been incredibly rewarding.
- 2/5/2021
- by Tyler Hersko
- Indiewire
Sundance Review: Summer of Soul Miraculously Reclaims and Restores a Forgotten Harlem Music Festival
The biggest block party of 1969 took place over six weeks in central Harlem. Clustered together into the rocky confines of Mt. Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park), 300,000 people spent their summer grooving to a free outdoor concert series that featured some of the world’s best gospel, blues, and R&b singers alive. At the intersection of the country’s racial and social revolution, the “Harlem Cultural Festival” offered a cathartic and electric musical experience for those in attendance, combining song and spoken word that inspired and unified. It was also largely forgotten.
Which makes Summer of Soul both a documentary and a rectification of history. Making his directorial debut, Amir “Questlove” Thompson, best known as the drummer and joint-frontman of The Roots, has brought this voided explosion of music back to colorful life. For 50 years, the opening title cards state, the footage of this massive festival—just 10 blocks north of Central Park,...
Which makes Summer of Soul both a documentary and a rectification of history. Making his directorial debut, Amir “Questlove” Thompson, best known as the drummer and joint-frontman of The Roots, has brought this voided explosion of music back to colorful life. For 50 years, the opening title cards state, the footage of this massive festival—just 10 blocks north of Central Park,...
- 1/30/2021
- by Jake Kring-Schreifels
- The Film Stage
If you had walked up to Harlem’s Mount Morris Park, on just about any given Sunday in the summer of 1969, you’d have run in to a crowd. There would be vendors selling food, kids running around, families grilling meat, folks lounging in the sun. You’d hear laughter, and chatter, and the sound of a good time. You’d smell what one resident recalls, decades later, as the combined scent of “Afro Sheen and chicken” wafting through the air. You’d probably catch someone climbing up on a tree,...
- 1/29/2021
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
The O’My’s have been a band for more than a decade, shuffling through many members and releasing a fair amount of music in the process. But the experimental Chicago soul duo would prefer you view Tomorrow, their spacey and sensual new album, as their true starting point. “I finally feel comfortable giving this to somebody and saying, ‘This is what we do,'” says singer-guitarist Maceo Haymes, 29, who founded the group in 2008 with keyboardist Nick Hennessey, 28. “If you can’t get it now, then you’re probably never going to.
- 10/12/2018
- by Dan Hyman
- Rollingstone.com
Yusef Lateef, who died on Monday after a bout with prostate cancer, was a devout Muslim who did not like his music to be called jazz because of the supposed indecent origins and connotations of the word (although those origins are still debated). He preferred the self-coined phrase "autophysiopsychic music." Furthermore, his music encompassed an impressively broad range of styles, and the only Grammy he won was in the New Age category -- for a recording of a symphony. Think about those things amid the flood of Lateef obituaries with "jazz" in the headline.
That said, certainly Lateef's own musical origins indisputably revolved around jazz. Growing up in Detroit, a highly fertile musical environment in the 1930s and beyond, Lateef got his first instrument, an $80 Martin alto sax, at age 18. Within a year he was on the road with the 13 Spirits of Swing (arrangements by Milt Buckner).
A Detroit friend,...
That said, certainly Lateef's own musical origins indisputably revolved around jazz. Growing up in Detroit, a highly fertile musical environment in the 1930s and beyond, Lateef got his first instrument, an $80 Martin alto sax, at age 18. Within a year he was on the road with the 13 Spirits of Swing (arrangements by Milt Buckner).
A Detroit friend,...
- 12/25/2013
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
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