Okay, class. Open your history books to the chapter on the Cold War. We’ll be focusing on the role new African nations played in that era. While we discuss it, I’m going to put on this jazz record for context. Welcome to today’s class, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, from director Johan Grimonprez. The film was awarded a Special Jury Prize at Sundance.
When the new nations of decolonized Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo, began to use their independence to stand up to the world’s superpowers, there were issues that the US couldn’t let slide. Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the DRC wanted to create a United States of Africa. But the DRC was the source of important materials, including the uranium needed for nuclear weapons. There is a title card early in the film in which President Eisenhauer says he’d be happy for Lumumba to fall into a river full of crocodiles.
The film traces the story of decolonization, the geopolitics that play out at the United Nations, the struggle for civil rights in the US, and the way the US deployed various musicians to Africa as “goodwill ambassadors”—who unknowingly were cover for covert operations. It didn’t take long for the superpowers to reestablish the order they wanted. They weren’t going to let people like Lumumba stand in their way.
The film is made up of archival footage of the times and events. These are the days of Nikita Khruschev pounding his shoe on the table at the UN. It was also the time of the music of such people as Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone, and Louis Armstrong. While we watch the events taking place and read comments that people have written about these times, the music of these and other legends play in the background.
This really is a two and a half hour history class (there are even footnotes)—but one that is far more engaging than any lecture you may have had to sit through in school. It reminds us that the issues of that time (and of today) are not as simple as we may think. The Cold War was not just the US and Europe versus the USSR. It played out in places like the DNC and had casualties that we may have forgotten long ago. It also shows that geopolitics also have repercussions closer to home—the way the civil rights movement is tied into the new freedom of Africans.
The jazz music, besides the way it plays into the history, also provides a feeling of the yearning for freedom. Jazz is an exercise in musical freedom and that helps inform our understanding of the way the geopolitics of the time played out.
Class dismissed, but keep in mind that we continue to live in a world where the struggle for independence and freedom continues.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is in select theaters, available to stream on Kanopy, and can be rented on Prime Video.
Photos courtesy of Kino Lorber.
