灵魂乐之夏

嘿！片子叫summer of soul， 不是soul of summer。 昨晚去门口的影院看“电影” —— 自打其重新开放后，我们就时不时去光顾一下，经常是醉翁之意在酒，也在于希望它不要因为去年的疫情而撑不下去了。影院可以边看边点饮料食物。—— 一个亮点，是饮料单里有根据电影inspired的cocktail。 本来，电影是艺术，但也是娱乐。到了大屏幕前，能喝一杯something interesting，也是额外一乐。我是不反对的。 昨晚，看了这场不是电影的电影。与其说纪录片，不如说是音乐片。就冲着音乐本身，便值五星好评，更何况其他！ 这是一场发生在1969年，纽约Harlem的音乐节。日期，正好是阿波罗登月。这场免费入场的音乐节吸引了有史以来规模最大的黑人观众，但结束后，录像却被压箱底。无人问津。 昨晚，随着影片，似觉穿越了时空。随着修复的影片来到了那个盛夏之日。镜头里的人一个个那么面貌鲜活，充满了“风格”，不只是台上的演员，也是芸芸观众。 音乐当然实在太好太好了。平时戴着耳机听，和看到昔日现场完全是两码事。临场发挥的各种花絮，太棒了啊！此刻，我只能再一次五体投地，表示，音乐是，就是，只能是，以天才胜的category。 天赋惊人，惊人，还是惊人！ 第一曲结束我简直忍不住要击节称叹，鉴于公共场合不能这么失态忍耐下去。事实证明我“多虑”了，因为往下每一首结束周围的观众都拍起了手。仿佛大家都觉得此刻不是在看电影，而是身处其中。除了音乐本身之外，也在于在那个时代 —— 黑人争取平权运动屡遭挫折，肯尼迪被刺，马丁路德金被暗杀 —— 怀着那样的感情去演绎歌曲，传达出的情感，感染力分外惊人。 回到影片。 我个人觉得，影片将音乐放置于主题地位，减缩，克制相关历史背景评论是明智之举。我觉得串联有逻辑，且尺度合宜。 1）表现南方黑人的悲惨生活，也并未多提，仅以staple singers的爸爸几句访谈概括。 2）本片没有特别的煽情马丁路德金被刺后的社会动荡，而是通过Mahalia Jackson一曲深情含泪演绎表达。 3）阿波罗登月。正好是音乐节当日。当全美人民关心这一人类壮举时，哈乐姆的黑人可没兴趣。 （当然没兴趣了！要我也没有兴趣！） 过去，总是一句, 黑人对此不感兴趣。此次影片展现了为什么不感兴趣。 登月关我P事啊，谁来关心我们这些又穷又遭歧视的黑人啊！ 踏上了月球？很好很好，但是他们从来不踏上我们住的地方呢！ 登月！？音乐节对我们更重要，因为这和我们有关。 —— 大致如此，五花八门的，黑色幽默的回答让我又捧腹又含泪。 4）Nina Simone。第一次看到她现场本人。 气质太特异了。眼前一亮。她是obviously hate white。但是，站在那个时代，原因也是obvious的。 are you ready to smash the white things? 遭受歧视的当年的黑人女学生（好美好有气质的一位黑人知识女性啊，后来是Nytimes记者）也只说了句，在宿舍，当白人女生聚集在她房间楼上的房间，狂踩地板骚扰她时，她在听Nina Simone。 you are young, gifted and black。 这是音乐的力量。 5) 5th dimension 的Aquarius/let the sunshine in。两曲结合实在高明。 Hair是我人生中看的第一次音乐剧。一直也有别样情结。 6）一个白人鼓手。 他说，有时候音乐远比文字可以传达得多。—— 深以为然。 7）当年的纽约市长John Lindsay也来助兴。影片给予他极大的正面评价。认为至少在平息种族仇视上起到了相当积极的作用。 我是第一次在镜头里看到他。OMG！根本就是个好莱坞明星似的大帅哥啊！镜头前气场气质皆一流。此刻简直要问现在的美国政客别的不说了，怎么看着就那么猥琐！譬如那个戏精科莫。Lindsay一生经历也相当令人唏嘘。做了八年纽约市长，身为律师，最后却没有退休金与医疗保险，在贫病交加中死去。 ————— 我常说，要是我对美术，或音乐稍有天赋，我真不愿意写文字。比起以上欠缺天赋的两个，我还是写东西稍微好一点。但文字的表达是曲折的，文字本身又太具象，往往意未能言尽，反引起了误解。 音乐就不同了。 音乐是可以直指人心的。 Spotify playlist： https://open.spotify.com/user/1246737910/playlist/1IG1Ai1OtxDGhdPuUKeMSH?si=HlUdWu6UTpep8vA5T-6-cw&dl_branch=1

影片开头，是这样介绍哈莱姆文化节的，“伍德斯托克音乐节在1969年夏天举办。距离该音乐节160公里，另一场音乐节在同一个夏天举办...这个音乐节叫「哈莱姆文化节」”听起来像是蹭热度，但细品之下，当中又包含着多少无奈和心酸。比起人尽皆知的伍德斯托克音乐节，哈莱姆文化节不论是在规模、表演者咖位和政治、文化意义上都毫不逊色，但仅仅是肤色差异，这场集会就注定了长久的沉寂和被遗忘。 在音乐节举办的次年，长达228分钟的伍德斯托克音乐节同名纪录片迅速登录院线，被公众一致认为是美国历史上最重要的音乐纪录片，也毫无悬念获得了当年的奥斯卡最佳纪录长片奖，提名最佳剪辑。 而对比之下，哈莱姆文化节则相形见拙。由于经费不足，主办方连灯源都买不起，为了保证整个下午有充足光源，舞台搭建时必须朝西，因为拍摄只能尽可能借助太阳光。最终录制了40多个小时的影像资料。 在音乐节结束后，为了尝试把影像资料卖给发行商，摄影师Hal Tulchin不得不把哈莱姆文化包装成“黑人伍德斯托克”来推销，可依然无人问津，因为没有人对黑人音乐或者历史感兴趣，一如既往。 就这样，哈莱姆文化节的录像带在Hal Tulchin家的地下室里冷藏了近50年。直到制片方请来百老汇热门音乐剧《汉密尔顿》（Hamilton）的制片人之一，著名嘻哈乐队The Roots的鼓手Questlove担任导演，这一卷卷承载着美国黑人关于种族文化和时代破碎记忆的影像才得以重见天日，成为我们今天看到的这部《灵魂乐之夏》。 比起伍德斯托克音乐节，整整晚了52年，但是Better late than never. 为什么不管是白人还是黑人都选择在这一年举办一场史无前例的音乐盛会。 时代背景也许可以解释这一切。 正如影片中被称为灵魂乐第一夫人的妮娜·西蒙所言，“我个人认为艺术家的责任是反映时代。在我们人生的那个关键时期，一切都令人绝望。我们每天面对的都是生存问题，在那种情况下我认为艺术家们没有选择余地” 60年代中晚期，战后的思潮很激烈，年轻人渴望一种与世无争、和平、平等的世界，却得不到重视，挫折感与避世感顿生。作为战后“迷惘的一代”，他们用萎靡、颓废和流浪式的生活方式来对抗现实的冷落。而伍德斯托克音乐节不羁怒吼的歌声里涌动着60年代的嬉皮士浪潮，是美国反主流文化一次声势浩大的亮相，激励了不少青年人重拾信心。 如果说白人嬉皮士们“渴望爱与和平”的反战思潮过于口号化稍显乌托邦，黑人们用音乐传递福音，疗愈、缓和被白人迫害的压力和痛苦，呼吁团结和坚强就显得务实很多。 1963年底，约翰·肯尼迪被杀后，马尔科姆说“肯尼迪遇刺是仇恨情绪制造的结果”，1965年2月，马尔科姆被暗杀；马丁·路德·金称“这是一场不幸的悲剧”，1968年4月，马丁·路德·金遇刺；罗伯特·肯尼迪宣布了死讯，2个月后他本人也遭暗杀。 一连串为黑人争取平等和权益的国家最高领导人及黑人领袖接连被暗杀，社会气氛极度令人焦虑，美国黑人已经对这个国家失去信心，纷纷走上街头抗议，黑人社区也因为支持暴力和非暴力而逐步走向分裂。 在影片中我们可以看到一位黑人领袖在演讲时愤怒地呼喊，“我们根本没必要跑去越南，向被白人说是敌人的人开枪。我们应该对国内那些射杀我们黑人兄弟的警察开枪才对。这里才是我们的战场。” 在那个“白人自由主义最横行的年代”，黑人处处遭遇暴力、压迫和不公，他们的血脉在喷涌，随时可能因为压抑不住的愤怒而揭竿而起，毁掉这个让他们失望乃至绝望的城市。 1969年的哈莱姆文化节，可以说是一剂及时的镇定剂，平复了他们的愤怒情绪，将分崩离析的黑人社区又重新联结在了一起。 反差的是，在伍德斯托克音乐节上，标榜精致主义的白人，都是一副长发披肩、不修边幅的“嬉皮士”装扮，看上去慵懒、颓废；而在哈莱姆文化节上，被当时社会主流认为是肮脏、无礼的黑人观众，却大都穿戴整齐、精神饱满。 在影片的开头，还可以看到这样一幕，有人丢了钱包，主持人在舞台上广播请失主来认领。尽管现场人山人海，却井然有序。 可见，文明、团结，一直都是黑人社区在践行和追寻的理想。 他们在改变，他们也渴望世界能够变得更好。 哈莱姆文化节举办期间，人类登月了。 关于这一段的剪辑也让人拍手叫绝。 在斯戴普爸爸家族合唱团的背景歌声下，是宇航员登录月球的画面和他们落地调试的声音，人声交织，却不重叠；舞台、登月、电视新闻、采访各种画面来回切换，却条理分明。错位剪辑形成视听上的强烈对比，我们可以分明地看到社会精英、以及普通白人、黑人对于登月事件截然不同的态度和反应，值得玩味。 采访白人时，他们的评价无不是“激动”、“伟大的科技成就”、“人类创举”、“全世界人更亲密了...”这样的“大词”，而记者在哈莱姆文化节现场采访黑人时，他们的回答则更实际更接地气，“浪费钱”、“不如用来接济穷人”、“先解决黑人穷苦和挨饿问题吧...” 今天可能会有人批评黑人群体短视、格局小，但是处在白人种族主义者对黑人极度压迫的时代，食不果腹、危在旦夕是家常便饭，靠吸食毒品来缓解痛苦和压力是很多人别无选择的存活方式，登录“什么都没有”的月球对于他们来说不能解决任何实际问题，确实是毫无意义。 正如记者所言，“这个文化节远比阿波罗11号登月更重要”。 因为音乐拯救了他们濒临崩溃的精神，重新构建了他们对国家、族群和自我的信心。 黑人青年一代也正是在这种精神的鼓舞下蓄势待发，等待崛起。 《灵魂乐之夏》不仅仅是一部纪录片，而是那些被压迫的少数族裔的集体呼喊，这是属于他们的一次胜利，虽迟必到。

ByAnthony Lane June 25, 2021 Halfway through a heavy year, the best movie so far—the one most likely to ease the load and lift you up—is “Summer of Soul.” It’s a documentary, directed by Ahmir (Questlove) Thompson, a drummer, a d.j., a record producer, and a founder of the Roots, best known as the house band for Jimmy Fallon. You may have spotted Thompson behind the decks at the Academy Awards, in April, where he seemed to be just about the only person, amid the scores of participants and the millions of television viewers, who was demonstrably having a good time. Now, adding one more arrow to his quiver, he has made his first film, in which pretty much everybody has a good time. “Summer of Soul” is about the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969. If you haven’t heard of it, that may be because it was—tellingly, if not deliberately—erased from public consciousness. The festival took place outdoors, in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park), and it was filmed, under lighting generously provided by the sun. The tapes then sat in a basement, largely unseen, for half a century. At last, they have been unearthed and, in the hands of Thompson and his editor, JoshuaL.Pearson, given new life and shape. Among the skills required of any documentarian is a croupier’s cunning, and you have to be quick to notice the way in which Thompson, holding a full deck of footage, shuffles and deals. The festival consisted of six separate events, held on a bunch of Sundays, beginning on June 29th and concluding on August24th. But we glimpse that schedule only once, in passing, and the rest of the film makes no distinction between the different days, splicing the acts together and leaving us with the impression that the crowds that mustered in the park—some three hundred thousand strong, in total—were treated to one big rolling jubilee of sweet sounds. As far as I can tell, we get no clips from the final event, listed as “Miss Harlem Beauty Pageant and Local Talent.” Probably a wise move. The festival’s producer, and the host of the proceedings, was Tony Lawrence, who is lauded in the film as “a hustler, in the best sense.” The outcome of his hustling was a lineup so absurdly rich, and so river-wide in its range of genres, that you want to laugh: Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, B.B.King, Hugh Masekela, David Ruffin—as thin as a barber’s pole, in a pink bow tie, with a falsetto sent from God—and Gladys Knight and the Pips. Especially the Pips. Their curveting dance routines, around a single microphone, are a thing of calibrated beauty. (We long to know more, and Thompson, an ace of the educative cutaway, obliges by bringing in Knight. She credits the band’s choreographer, Cholly Atkins, who schooled them for ten or eleven hours a day.) Then, there’s the gleeful confession of Ray Barretto, bespectacled and busy at his drums: “In my blood I got Black—and white—red—Puerto Rican—Indian. I’m all messed up!” To claim that the stage was occupied exclusively by people of color, though, would be inaccurate. For one thing, we see Lawrence bid welcome to the mayor of New York, JohnV.Lindsay, and introduce him as “our blue-eyed soul brother.” (For any viewers who are baffled by the film’s description of Lindsay as a “liberal Republican,” it should be explained that this refers to a once flourishing species, tough of hide but strangely peaceable in demeanor, that now verges on total extinction, like the Sumatran rhino.) Also visible, during a phenomenal set by Sly and the Family Stone, and easy to pick out in leopard-skin bell-bottoms, is Greg Errico. In the words of a man named Darryl Lewis, who was there that day, “The white guy is the drummer! You know, he’s not supposed to be able to do that.” Lewis, a fount of geniality, is one of many attendees who are interviewed for the film. Their memories are, without exception, deliciously fresh. Dorinda Drake, who was nineteen at the time, says, “That’s the summer we became free”—pause—“of our parents.” Musa Jackson recalls the aroma in the park as if it were incense: “It smelled like Afro Sheen and chicken.” He was a little kid at the festival, though not so little that he didn’t lose his heart to Marilyn McCoo, a singer with the 5th Dimension. “I didn’t want to leave,” he says. Then, being a gentleman, he corrects himself: “I didn’t want to leave her.” The 5th Dimension are seen performing their version of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In”—which is almost as merry as the lip-synched version at the end of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” (2005)—wearing yellow, red, and orange. “You remember Creamsicles?” Jackson says, needing to nail the orange down. At the risk of blasphemy, I reckon that the clothes in “Summer of Soul” are very nearly as entertaining as the music. The cravats! The fringes! The hectic ruffs! Lawrence, as befits the master of ceremonies, sports an ever-changing cycle of outfits, including a white lace top with a carmine vest, and a shiny shirt that looks like an explosion in a host of golden daffodils. Imagine the envious glances he would have drawn at the court of Louis XIV. “Summer of Soul” is one of those rare films from which you emerge saying, “My favorite part was that bit. No, that bit. Wait, how about that bit?” Personally, I’m torn between Stevie Wonder’s keyboard solo on “Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da Day,” in which he plays like a man possessed, and “Everyday People” from Sly and the Family Stone, with its captivating chorus—“Different strokes, for different folks,/And so on and so on and scooby-dooby-doo.” Has there ever been a neater précis of the Bill of Rights? And I haven’t even mentioned the beatific array of gospel performers, including Pops Staples and the Staple Singers, or the Edwin Hawkins Singers, vivid in lime green, swaying in unison to “Oh Happy Day.” But something else is happening here. There’s no lack of great concert movies, so how to account for the urgent thrill of this one? Because of all the unhappy days. Because the whole of the Harlem Cultural Festival was, as someone remarks of Nina Simone’s imperious set, “like a rose coming through cement.” Because “Summer of Soul” has a subtitle that presents its political credentials: “Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised.” The buzz of the occasion (even as the end credits die, you hear the hum of the throng) arose against a backdrop of profound unrest, in the African-American community above all. A year earlier, on April 4, 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Harlem had suffered riots and hours of looting, and, as Darryl Lewis suggests, “New York was trying not to have a repeat of that, in ’69.” Hence the brief but vital images of white policemen, standing calmly in the midst of Black festivalgoers, and neither making trouble nor seeking to rein it in. Who knows, maybe they felt the groove inside. What we are witnessing, in short, is not a state of bliss but a precious, precarious interlude of release and relief, before the pressures of an unequal society kicked back in. History chose to commemorate Woodstock, which unfolded a hundred miles or so away, in the heat of the same summer. But history, as so often, went to the wrong gig.