Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

There are moments of reconsideration, evaluation, reflection, moments of distance that are able to grant us a new consciousness. Such moments are exactly what Johan Grimonprez’ Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat brings in drawing a pitilessly lucid picture of what we could call “the Sunday of Africa”, the season of the independency of African nations starting from the end of the Fifties of the last century.

A highly informative documentary, Grimonprez’ film not only uses music in order to have us dive into this specific epoch through amazing editing work that has History breathing and vibrating, but also focuses on a specific misunderstanding concerning the American jazz musicians exploited by the American government, in order to water down the powerful revolutionary movement in Africa that was seeking a genuine independency from future Western and Soviet influences. We discover the commitment of musicians in a battle that consciously involved their music, and not always consciously involved the function attributed to their music… We discover the underestimated contributions of women like Andrée Blouin and Abbey Lincoln – to whom we can add Nina Simone, Melba Liston, Miriam Makeba, Marie Daulne “Zap Mama”, and so on.

A bitter-sweet Sunday, the African one, that this wonderful film is able to explore in making understanding and consciousness go together with emotion and motivation. If History has a rhythm, Grimonprez could seize it, be it through Nikita Khrushchev’s bumping the table in UN Assembly or through Dizzy Gillespie’s refined beats at the trumpet. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is a must-see film that will make us see both History and music differently.