[2 articles]
'Soundtrack for a Revolution': a powerful mix of music, civil-rights history
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/movies/2011736311_mr30soundtrack.html
"Soundtrack for a Revolution," a documentary by Bill Guttentag and
Dan Sturman, is a brilliant capsule history of the civil-rights
movement in the 1950s and 1960s, punctuated by stirring performances
from John Legend, Wyclef Jean, the Roots and others.
By Tom Keogh
April 29, 2010
"Soundtrack for a Revolution" is ostensibly the story of the
civil-rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, as told through the
songs that helped keep morale high and emotions focused among
nonviolent activists during dark and terrible times.
Except, to be honest, this illuminating and sometimes devastating
documentary isn't quite what it's billed. Not that there's a problem.
"Soundtrack" may very well be the finest, broad history on film of
the Southern Freedom Movement years as measured from the Montgomery
bus boycott (beginning in 1955) to the assassination of the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1968).
The movement's major campaigns, strategies and high points between
those events are each generally but insightfully discussed by a
number of figures who survived the bloody trenches of civil
disobedience. That golden group includes now-Congressman John Lewis,
Andrew Young, Lula Jo Williams, Julian Bond, the Rev. Samuel "Billy"
Kyles and Dorothy Cotton, among many other, often lesser-known veterans.
These participants and eyewitnesses not only explain the tactical and
moral purposes of the famous lunch-counter sit-ins and Freedom Rides
and voter-registration drives and Selma-to-Montgomery marches. They
also offer personal accounts of what it meant and felt like to go
from one objective, one place, to the next, knowing each time they
would be beaten, jailed or worse.
Hearing Lewis say he thought he was a dead man the day white police
savagely attacked him and fellow marchers in Selma and then seeing
footage of him as a young man courageously leading that march can
leave one shaking with just a fraction of the rage civil-rights
activists had learned from King to transcend.
As for the music: Co-directors Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman
("Nanking") front-load "Soundtrack" with testimony about the
importance of songs during the movement's best and worst of times.
"They can take away everything except the songs," someone says,
"which means they can't take our souls."
But it isn't long before the role of music in "Soundtrack" proves
subtly dissimilar to the music in, for example, Lee Hirsch's
outstanding 2002 documentary "Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part
Harmony." ("Amandla!" focuses on songs as a form of mass
communication among blacks in apartheid-era South Africa.)
In "Soundtrack," songs are largely emotional punctuation in a story
still very difficult to confront so many decades later. Toward that
cathartic, spiritually restorative purpose, a number of beautiful
performances in the film, shot in the confines of a cozy studio
setting, stand out.
Among them are the Roots' spare and warm take on the ever-hypnotic
"Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around," John Legend's stirring
version of the traditional "Woke Up This Morning," Wyclef Jean and
Jerry Wonder's knowing rendition of Phil Ochs' "Here's to the State
of Mississippi," and Anthony Hamilton and the Blind Boys of Alabama's
gorgeous "This May Be the Last Time."
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Tom Keogh: [email protected]
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Civil rights footage carries 'Soundtrack'
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100430/ENT/704309975
By Robert Horton
April 30, 2010
A sincere attempt to look at a great subject through a new prism,
"Soundtrack for a Revolution" makes the case for the importance of
music to the U.S. civil rights movement.
It's easy to believe it: Participants recall the joy of singing
during marches and the power of music in keeping the faith. And
interspersed with the present-day testimonies and archival footage
are new performances of classic songs from the era.
These are passionately delivered and cleanly produced, although you
might sometimes wonder why they are required in place of, say, the
original versions.
Still, you've got Joss Stone with "Eyes on the Prize," the Roots
singing "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round" (triumphantly quoted
in a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., shown in the film), and John
Legend doing "Woke Up this Morning."
Wyclef Jean contributes a pointed take on "Here's to the State of
Mississippi," which was not a traditional folk song but an original
written by Phil Ochs, the gifted protest singer. Coming after an
account of the Freedom Summer murders of the Andrew Goodman, James
Chaney and Michael Schwermer, who were killed in Mississippi in 1964,
the performance certainly has punch.
Nothing tops old warrior Richie Havens doing "Will the Circle Be
Unbroken," a classic that joins folk music and hymns. And the fusion
of different musical traditions gospel, folk, rock, blues is a
nice undercurrent in the movie.
Directors Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman have a strong history of
documentaries, and this one is certainly effective. I have to say
that the joining of music with the civil rights movement doesn't
always go smoothly, even if music was undoubtedly a part of the scene.
The interviews include civil rights veterans such as Julian Bond,
Andrew Young and Congressman John Lewis, who got his skull fractured
by Alabama police during the march from Selma to Montgomery.
Their comments are relevant, but nothing tops the power of the
archival footage. If film didn't exist to chronicle the savage
enthusiasm of the people beating protestors staging sit-ins at
segregated lunch counters in the South, it might be hard to believe,
and might even be questioned today.
But the cameras were rolling, and the proof is indelible. Those
images, and the footage of police fire-hosing marchers, also shocked
television viewers of the time.
One participant recalls childhood curiosity about why graveyards were
segregated surely at that point racial prejudice must wane?
Whatever its wobbles, "Soundtrack for a Revolution" is adept at
bringing back the details of the bad old days.
--
"Soundtrack for a Revolution"
Documentary that tries to link the civil rights movement with the
musical traditions that supported the cause: gospel songs, folk
music, blues. The premise doesn't always click, but the archival
footage is as powerful as ever, and new performances of the classic
songs are clean and passionate.
Rated: Not rated; probably PG-13 for subject matter, violence
.
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