Jazz and Cold War politics are intimately entwined in Flemish director Johan Grimonprez’s latest doc feature, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, a work-in-progress at CONNEXT. The film explores the circumstances which led to musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach staging their own protest at the UN against the murder of Congolese leader, Patrice Lumumba.
The eagerly anticipated documentary was first pitched at CPH:FORUM. Produced by Daan Milius for zap-o-matik and Emmy Oost for Cassette for timescapes, the film is nearing completion.
“We still have to cover the budget for the archive. There is a lot of music and there is a lot of archive,” Grimonprez says of the work still to be completed on the doc which should be picture locked by early December. The director expects the film to be ready in 2023 – and festival directors are already circling it.
Grimonprez sees the film as a companion piece of sorts to his earlier documentary, The Shadow World, about the global arms trade and the Belgian colonial legacy.
In Soundtrack, the director looks back at the famous moment when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was shown slamming his shoe at the UN in October 1960. “It was portrayed often as the weirdest or the funniest moment in Cold War history but actually it was in relation to Congo,” the director notes.
This was a tumultuous time at the United Nations. For once, there was an Afro-Asian majority…but far away from the UN, skullduggery was taking place in Congo. Lumumba was being toppled and murdered.
So where does the jazz come in? Armstrong was in Congo, Dizzy Gillespie went to Syria and Duke Ellington visited Iraq at the same time a coup was planned in these countries. This wasn’t coincidence.
Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong was “a jazz ambassador” who travelled the world. In hindsight, that description has an ironic resonance. The director has studied his itinerary. Armstrong was sent to the Congo to draw attention away from the CIA’s attempts to oust Lumumba from power.
Rights for music from musical figures of the stature of Armstrong don’t come cheap, but Grimonprez has an ace up his sleeve. Belgians love jazz. “What is beautiful is that we have a lot of performances that were on Belgian television. There was a jazz scene in Belgium.
“It’s all quite schizophrenic…Belgium is being put in its underpants [being criticized in the film] but, at the same time, Belgian TV is a co-producer,” the director notes of how the film’s criticism of the country’s dirty political legacy doesn’t appear to have stopped TV companies and public bodies from funding his film. That means he has access to “a huge amount of footage” not only of the Congo, but of jazz stars.
“Underneath, there’s always that link to what jazz stands for in the United States, but also how it has been used,” the director says of jazz as a freewheeling American form associated with creative and political freedom that was co-opted by US propagandists for political purposes.
The emphasis isn’t just on US jazz. The filmmakers are working with Planet Ilunga, a Belgian vinyl label with a special interest in Congolese music of the 1950s and 60s. “Of course, music in the Congo, leading up to independence, was very crucial and, in a way, was part of the political scene.”
When Lumumba and Congolese politicians were in Brussels, holding talks about independence in 1960, the African Jazz Orchestra was also in town. Its song ‘Independence Cha Cha’ became the anthem for the liberation movement across the African continent – and was the name used by those fighting in Rhodesia [eventually to become Zimbabwe] for their freedom.
The filmmakers have brought together some intriguing collaborators on the project. These include Patrick O’Brien, the son of Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Irish politician and author chosen by UN Secretary General Mr Dag Hammarskjold (soon to die in a mysterious plane crash as his special representative to the Congo. Conor Cruise O’Brien later wrote a play, Murderous Angels, about events in the country. Also helping with the documentary is Eve Blouin, daughter of political activist Andrée Blouin, an advisor and speechwriter for Lumumba. Eve has provided some evocative 8mm films of her mother. Another important voice in the documentary is In Koli Jean Bofane, the Belgian-Congolese novelist.
And then there is the Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev. Through Khrushchev’s son, the filmmakers have recordings of the leader’s memoirs.
One mystery, namely just why Khrushchev slammed his shoe, may be finally resolved. “That’s the hook of the film – why did Khrushchev slam his shoe. Khrushchev is pivotal because he initiated the UN resolution for decolonisation…that is a little bit lost in history.”
Grimonprez doesn’t feel it’s appropriate for him, as a white Belgian, to tell the story in Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat on his own. “I feel it has to be a collaboration. I can tell it from the [perspective] of being a good colonialist and digging in the past but I thought it was so important to draw alliances,” he says of the other voices that will be heard in the documentary.
No, this hasn’t been easy to edit. “We are getting lost in the material,” the director jokes of the very complex events that he is chronicling. Even so, he is certain the film will be accessible. “We are really hoping for a theatrical, mainstream release that will provoke awareness…there is a lot in the film that is not known about that period and has never been told,” the director says. “The film is not just an academic thing but it has this emotional depth that actually can bring it to a younger audience.” The music, he adds, is “the bridge” that will make it easier for viewers to step in…
