Most documentaries about the 1960s are content to dwell on hippies, rock music festivals and antiwar protests—news highlights from the lifestyle file. Johan Grimonprez’s immensely entertaining, powerfully informative doc Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat takes a different approach, a provocative view of social and political ferment at a crucial moment in world history.
The story centers on the Congo. In 1960 the former Belgian colony in central Africa achieved independence as the Republic of the Congo, and almost immediately infighting began over the country’s immense natural resources—particularly uranium, the necessary component for nuclear weapons.
World superpowers the USSR and the USA did most of the overt intriguing, but numerous factions inside the country jousted for control of Congolese self-determination. In a typical Cold War showdown of words, both the Russkies and the Yankees loudly purported to be Congo’s besties.
As depicted in Belgian filmmaker Grimonprez’s exhilarating newsreel montage, the battle for the soul of what would later become the Democratic Republic of the Congo ultimately involved just about every member country of the United Nations—and stirred up a very vocal host of political activists, writers and popular entertainers.
It is director Grimonprez’s keen editorial idea to tell this tale of high-stakes Cold War shenanigans largely from the perspective of internationally famous American jazz musicians. And so whenever US President Dwight D. Eisenhower or voluble Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev appear on screen to talk about the Congo situation—which is often—their commentaries are counterpointed by the likes of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, singer Miriam Makeba, drummer Max Roach and singer Abbey Lincoln.
Those voices are accompanied by a glorious soundtrack of tunes by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, African rumbero Dr. Nico, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman, among others.
The operating concept behind Soundtrack is that despite the military and economic might of the US and USSR, the smaller, poorer, darker-skinned nations of the world tended to agree with Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s prime minister, that power belongs to the people, not necessarily to the corporate chieftains and big-shot First World pols who could afford to hire CIA goons to crush the opposition.
Then, as now, the vestiges of a “dying” colonialism clung to Third World potential profit centers with armed force. Arrayed against them were Lumumba and his pan-African coalition, African nationalists such as human rights advocate Andrée Blouin (she provides vivid testimony in the film), and seemingly every non-aligned contingent at the United Nations.
In a startling bit of footage from 1961, the distressing news of Lumumba’s assassination—which signaled the victory of the pro-Western, pro-imperialist forces—caused a full-fledged riot on the floor of the UN Security Council in New York. The idea of a United States of Africa, a longtime dream of some formerly European colonies, eventually died out as well.
The documentary’s account of this worldwide culture clash is not without its ironies. Grand old New Orleans jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong was sent to the Congo by the US State Department as America’s “Ambassador of Love.” In effect, Satchmo was co-opted as a stooge, a distraction from the cold, hard business of carving up Congo’s estimated $24 trillion stash of untapped mineral resources. In-country, Armstrong was reportedly known as “Okuka Lokole,” a jungle wizard who casts spells with a voice like ringing bells.
Needless to say, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln were not fooled by the pro-corporate monkey business. The dichotomy between competing ideologies had little to do with the folks on the ground. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat lays it all out: the story of the last 300 years (or more) of world history. The eternal question: Who gets to decide?
Grimonprez’s doc is an ideal companion piece to the films of Raoul Peck, Gillo Pontecorvo and Ken Loach—and to the writings of Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin and, yes, Abbie Hoffman. See it immediately.
Opens Dec. 5 at the Roxie in San Francisco. roxie.com
