150 Word Review: 'Soundtrack To A Coup d'Etat' (2024)
And I think to myself, "What a depressing world"
Director Johan Grimonprez's riveting Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat feels improvised, like the jazz music that fuels the true story of how Western colonial powers strangled the resource-rich African country of Congo.
Grimonprez's documentary is a runaway A-train of archival footage, interviews, texts, first-person testimonies, and performances from legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone, and Duke Ellington. It's also a stylish and assertive video essay—there's a POV. The movie threads together multiple mid-century narratives: Cold War diplomacy, the civil rights movement, and the politics of America's jazz greats. Historical guest stars include Malcolm X, Abbey Lincoln, and Nikita Khrushchev.
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat is a frenetic, meticulously researched work of pop scholarship about the dream of a free Africa and the short, tragic reign of the Congo's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba that climaxes with Louis Armstrong arriving in the Congo at the same time as CIA assassins.
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I missed this in the theaters! Really want to see it