An animated film titled “Harlem Wednesday”:
Listen: Questlove Details the Recovery and Birth of Summer of Soul
Until about a year ago, if you mentioned the cultural impact of the Harlem Cultural Festival, most people wouldn’t know what you were talking about. Taking place over several weekends in the summer of 1969, and featuring artists like Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone and B.B. King, the Harlem Cultural Festival was vastly overshadowed in the media by Woodstock. Extensive footage and recordings from it sat packed away in a basement for decades, so the event survived mostly in the memories of the people who were there. And then, Questlove was approached to make that footage into a documentary.
That award-winning film, called Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), was Questlove’s directorial debut. And recently — naturally — he released the soundtrack to go along with it.