Amazing things creep into the marketplace unheralded, and I'd like to alert you to one of them. It's called The Soul Of Nina Simone, and it's a compilation album released this fall on RCA/Legacy. The music is extraordinary, of course—this is, after all, Nina Simone. Even more thrilling, however, is the amazing history lesson that comes as an added bonus with the CD.
This is a "double-sided" release, which means there's music on one side and a movie on the other. (Being technologically challenged, I'd never heard of such a thing, but I'm sure all you readers own dozens of them). Anyhow. The DVD features three Simone performances from the '60s, the last of which is a clip of her onstage in Central Park in 1969, at what's come to be known as the Black Woodstock. Black Woodstock? I'd never even heard of it—further proof, if any were needed, of what a racist country America was and apparently always will be. The white Woodstock is enshrined in America's collective memory as some kind of cultural milestone, but the history books can't be bothered to mention that during that very same summer, the giants of black music came together for the Harlem Festival, a series of six concerts held in Central Park.
Organized by Hal Tulchin and sponsored by Maxwell House Coffee, the Harlem Festival came together just as the Civil Rights/Black Power movement was going down in flames. All its key leaders—Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Huey Newton—had been assassinated or jailed, and white America was busy heralding the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Tulchin had a film crew at all the concerts, which drew crowds of up to 100,000, and his plan was to package the footage for a U.S. television network. "Unfortunately," Tulchin recalls, "time and time again I was told candidly, 'there's no interest in putting on a black special.'"
In light of who was on the Harlem Festival bill, it's demeaning to refer to Tulchin's concert series as a "black special." Among those performing were Sly & The Family Stone, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight & The Pips, B.B. King, Mahalia Jackson, The Staples Singers, The Chambers Brothers, Dizzy Gillespie, and the incandescent Nina Simone. Tulchin wound up with 50 hours of unsellable footage of these amazing performers, and it seems that little has changed in the 36 years since the concert took place. For the past 18 months veteran documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville has struggled to get funding to transform the raw footage into a feature film, receiving a polite "no thanks" from everyone he's approached. What the hell?! Wouldn't you pay to see this film?! Based on the clips of Nina Simone included in her latest CD, I'd run to the theater. God, she was magnificent. There was so much anger and pain in her face, even as she created exquisitely beautiful music.
Simone wrote, or co-wrote, three of the four songs she performs here, and one of them—"To Be Young, Gifted And Black"—is simply too moving for words. A friend of mine actually cried when I showed him the footage of Simone performing this song. It has a gorgeous melody, for starters, and it's a song of dignity and hope. In the film you hear Simone's inspiring words as the camera pans the vast audience, and instantly you recognize the tragedy that's befallen black America. These concerts were filmed at the height of the Black Power Movement, years before crack and the gangsta thing and the prison industry dealt a fatal blow to black America. Back in 1969 these people looked good—joyful, together, unbelievably stylish and sharp. These few minutes of film footage make for a potent history lesson you won't soon forget.
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