A conversation with Questlove on his 'Summer of Soul' soundtrack

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4.3 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

In this special episode, our friends at the It's Been A Minute podcast talk with musician and filmmaker Questlove about the recently released soundtrack to his 2001 documentary Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Host Sam Sanders chats with Questlove about the long history of Black erasure and the memorable performances from The 5th Dimension, Stevie Wonder (playing the drums!), Mavis Staples, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone and many more.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to It's Been A Minute from NPR.
0:02.2	I'm Sam Sanders.
0:04.4	All right, I wanna take us to 1969.
0:07.5	The summer of 1969.
0:10.1	The summer that we went to the moon.
0:12.0	It's one small spam program.
0:14.6	The last summer of a truly historic decade.
0:17.8	And the summer that saw a really big,
0:20.0	groundbreaking music festival in New York.
0:22.5	A festival.
0:23.3	How's it being abandoned on highways,
0:25.0	leading to the result area?
0:26.9	I know the festival you are thinking of right now.
0:29.7	And it's not that one.
0:31.3	This music festival did not take place upstate.
0:34.3	And it wasn't just a few days.
0:37.9	This one happened in Harlem, summer of 1969,
0:41.4	every weekend for almost two months.
0:45.4	Back then, it was called the Harlem Cultural Festival.
0:48.5	Welcome to the Harlem Cultural Festival.
0:50.8	Here in the Harlem High, but now Questlove calls it the summer of soul.
1:00.8	Here we go again.
	...

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