Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969 is the festival all but forgotten, deliberately thrown (literally) down in a basement. Many people in Harlem at the time believed the festival is the main reason racial disturbances that year didn’t occur like the previous year after the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4,1968. All in all, over 300,000 Harlem residents, 99% African American, crowded into Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) – all outdoors – to see and hear a great tribute to African American music: gospel, jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, and soul. The few cops at the festival are barely visible. Nearly all the security is provided by the Black Panthers for an energetic, peaceful, and historical music festival.
Thanks to Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the director, who found the two-inch tapes in a basement simply going to waste for 50 years, we have Summer of Soul. What a grand prize to see Black people from little kids to seniors watching the singers and the instrumentalists perform on stage. The Harlem Cultural Festivalhad a strong touch, reminiscent of the Harlem Renaissanceof the 1920s.… Read the rest “Summer of Soul”