BLUU HAVENS CHICAGO MARCH GATHERING – SATURDAY, MARCH 19TH 1:00-2:30 on Zoom
Join at 12:30 for Socializing or Just Hanging Out & Listening to Music! We welcome you to join us for our March Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism BLUU Havens Chicago Gathering.
This will be a Black Only Sacred Space. To request a zoom link please email: BLUUHavenChicago@gmail.com.
Be transported with us back to the Summer of 1969 and the amazing Harlem Cultural Festival in the acclaimed 2021 documentary: “Summer of Soul (…Or When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” By Questlove
From NPR’s It’s Been A Minute: “There were two big music festivals happening in the summer of 1969. While one defined an entire generation of culture and music… the other remained obscure — the only recorded footage placed in a basement that was said to have sat, unpublished, for decades. That is, until Questlove’s first documentary Summer of Soul came out last year. In this episode, Sam chats with Questlove about the recent release of the film’s soundtrack, the long history of Black erasure, and the memorable performances from the likes of The 5th Dimension, Stevie Wonder (playing the drums!), Mavis Staples, Mahalia Jackson, and Nina Simone.”
NPR-Questlove’s ‘Summer of Soul’ Brings Lost Music Back To Life
Watch this film in advance of our gathering for free on Hulu & Disney + with Subscription or for $5.99 on YouTube, Google Play, Apple TV or Amazon Prime.
Discussion Questions for “Summer of Soul”
What was your overall reaction to the film and the music presented? Were there some musical groups or singers that you were seeing and hearing for the first time? Who was your favorite and why?
What were your thoughts about the 5th Dimension member’s comment that their group was sometimes accused of not being “black enough.” She also asked “how do you color a sound?” Do you find this to be a relevant question? Why did the 5th Dimension consider it so important to perform in Harlem?
What reaction did you have to the multi-dimensional range of the musical performances at the Harlem Cultural Festival – e.g. from a 19 y/o Stevie Wonder to The Staples Singers to B.B. King, Motown, the Edwin Hawkins Singers, Sly and the Family Stone, and Nina Simone. Is some of this music new to you – even in 2022?
Discuss the cultural and political context of the time at which this Festival was held, 1969, including the civil rights movement, Black Panthers, Operation Breadbasket, the Vietnam War, the Nixon Administration, the moon landing, the beginnings of the drug problem and the “War on Drugs,” and Woodstock. How did the Harlem Cultural Festival reflect – or perhaps not reflect – these other milestone events of the end of the 1960s?
What were your thoughts about the (mostly white) media’s reaction to some of the attendees comments about the enormous investment in the moon landing vs. investing in impoverished black communities across the country?
What was your overall reaction to the crowd itself? One narrator described the Festival as a “rose coming out of concrete.” What thoughts do you have about the audience attending the Harlem Cultural Festival as compared to that of Woodstock?
Acclaimed journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault commented in the film: “We hold these truths to be self-evident – that black history is gonna be erased.” In what ways do you see that statement playing out now, more than 50 years later? What can we do to keep those attempts at “erasure” from happening?
