It's taken 50 years to finally see 'The black Woodstock'. The Summer of Soul documentary pays tribute to a dazzling array of singers and musicians performing at the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969.
The surprising - and slightly shocking - thing is nobody seemed to know it happened, even though the was filmed in its entirety.
Photo: Screenshot
The year 1969 was extraordinary - in many ways just as remarkable as the rather more publicised events of the year before.
If 1968 was a year of political unrest - assassinations, riots, the escalating war in Vietnam and the election of President Richard Nixon, 1969 was the year of the Moon landing, the culmination of youth culture at Woodstock and its premature demise with the Manson murders.
But in Harlem, New York, these issues were less important than the rise of black consciousness. And in many ways the artists on display in this film, eclipsed many of those at the hippie festival at Woodstock.
The Fifth Dimension, B B King, the Staples Singers, featuring a young Mavis Staples, the even younger Stevie Wonder, who just the year before was still being billed as Little Stevie, the hard-driving Chambers Brothers.
And all this brilliant music was being covered by a local TV station - and I have to say, often covered rather better than the high-powered film crews shooting the Woodstock movie.
For one thing, all the events at Harlem took place in daylight. You can see everything.
You can not only see the artists - did I mention gospel diva Mahalia Jackson, jazz greats like Hugh Masakela and Mongo Santamaria, and the divine Gladys Knight and the Pips? - but also the audience, entirely black and about to make some big changes.
The music may have been the big attraction, then and now, but it was only part of what was going on in 1969.
Suddenly black America was no longer interested in being treated like well-behaved Negroes, waiting to be given Civil Rights, or trouble-makers when things went badly.
So why has it taken over 50 years for this extraordinary footage to reach the screen? When musician - and director of Summer of Soul - Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson was handed the original videotapes, he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
In the end these recordings barely got a screening from the TV station who'd commissioned them.
They became almost an urban legend, even among the people who'd been there. Did it really happen? Or was it just a dream?
It's significant that the standout act at the Harlem Cultural Festival was also one of the major highlights at the subsequent, mostly white Woodstock Festival a month later.
When Sly and the Family Stone took the stage, pretty much everything changed.
Some of the Family Stone were black, some were white, two of the musicians were women, but above all they brought the funk like no-one before, and very few since.
One thing that made very little impact on Harlem was the famous Moon landing, which happened in the middle of one of the concerts.
Director Questlove was shocked to hear some booing when it was announced. The phrase people used - "whitey's on the moon" - summed up the feeling. They could spend all that money going into outer space, but they couldn't spend anything on poverty in the community.
For Harlem, the Cultural Festival was rather more significant - and it was free.
