“If Africa is shaped like a gun, then Congo is the trigger. » Frantz Fanon, the famous philosopher of revolutionary decolonization, signs a sentence that fits very well with the spirit of Soundtrack of a coup d’étatone of the documentaries that can be seen this year at In-Edit, the international documentary film festival focused on music.
The film, directed by Belgian Johan Grimonprez, rediscovers the spirit of black and the so-called cinema polar A French full of intrigues, spies, agreements and twists and turns of history. Only this time the viewer is faced with the harsh truth of the facts. The common thread is the process of independence from the huge and rich —uranium, cobalt, coltan— Territory of the Congo, first of the crown of Belgium, then of American interests of the Eisenhower administration in the middle of the last century.
The particularity that keeps us glued to the story for two and a half hours – with the merit it has today – is that it is a story told through the phrasing of the sax, the keys of the piano and the drumsticks, bringing out the brilliance of the Charles. A thriller with a jazz soundtrack, with editing that doesn’t stop, a work that once again puts music in the spotlight on the big screen. Soundtrack of a coup d’état This places us at a time when something was happening that seems very distant to us today: we had the feeling that the world could change radically. For the better, in a sense of reorganization of social justice both in international geopolitics and in the living conditions of the populations of each country.
A time when, particularly, and this is another palpable difference with our time, the planet seemed to look towards Africa. In fact, 1960, the year the documentary focuses on, is a key year in decolonization, as up to ten countries, including Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal and Congo itself, declared their independence. Dreams were born such as promoting the creation of a Union of African States, a concept already verbalized by black liberation ideologue Marcus Garvey several decades ago. It was a continental federation promoted by Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, followed by the Guinean and Malian governments and in which Patrice Lumumba was invited to participate.
Lumumba is the eminent protagonist of this choral story. An unexpected leader for Western public opinion, he was born at a time when his country was not still free, but was the private property of the Belgian King Leopold II. The recent return to this period of death, repression and resource exploitation has led to the removal of some statues of the monarch in cities like Antwerp. The Congolese capital, later Kinshasa, was called Léopoldville when Lumumba won the elections and independence was proclaimed. From there, events unfold like a torrent. Soundtrack of a coup d’état It’s a dizzying pace that doesn’t stop, in line with what they also gave to Lumumba.
The film also does not give up presenting concrete facts with a certain poetry, mixing references from official documents and literary quotations. Grimonprez illuminates these corners of History shamefully forgotten by the West, and thus the viewer will be able, for example, to know the figure of Andrée Blouin, activist, head of protocol and author of Lumumba’s speeches, in addition to the international liaison of the new emerging Congo. Unsurprisingly, she was vilified in the most misogynistic way by her detractors. His best-known nickname, and the one with which he even titled his autobiography, was prouder: the black passionflower.
Episodes such as segregation in the form of a Belgian puppet state of the Congolese territory of Katanga, controlled by the Union Minière of the European country, also pass before our eyes. Or the nationalization of the Suez Canal by President Gamal Abdel Nasser after the Israeli invasion of Egypt. Also the role of the Non-Aligned Movement under the leadership of the Egyptians, Indonesians, Indians and Yugoslavs. Finally, we will see the iconic images of Fidel Castro’s participation in the United Nations General Assembly in 1960, when the Cuban leader stayed and spoke with Malcolm trip to New York. .
And it’s all riddled with little-known details, like the fact that Louis Armstrong was a bit of a CIA Trojan horse in Africa, performing in ghostly Katanga on a State Department-funded tour. Soundtrack of a coup d’état is deliciously balanced between hard and the soft politics. Music matters a lot here. We learn that the Congo had its own rumba hit in Lingala a few months before its self-determination and that the song, Independence Cha Charesonated loudly in neighboring countries occupied in the same fight.
But above all, the most exciting jazz ever created reigns here. This is equivalent to saying Dizzy Gillespie and his overwhelming personality, Ornette Coleman flying free, the mystique of John Coltrane, the depth into which Nina Simone takes us or the torn complaint of Abbey Lincoln belonging to that one. following professor it’s his album with Max Roach We insist!. Listening to it is still as shocking as the protest Lincoln herself organized with Maya Angelou at the United Nations just one month after Lumumba’s assassination. These cries still survive today.
