Summer of Soul | National Geographic

less than 1m read

·Nov 10, 2024

(Fast-paced drumming music)

[Man] What time is it?

♪ This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius ♪

"Summer of Soul" is about the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969. With so many greats of music in the day, Tony Lawrence and Hal Tulchin came up with an idea that we need to throw a beautiful soul festival to use music to heal a community that's hurting.

♪ Let the sun shine ♪

And when it came time to distributing, they couldn't find any takers. In fact, a counterpart festival that happened about 10 days later called Woodstock pretty much got to define an entire generation. We wanted progress. We're black people and we should be proud of this.

The day that we got nominated for an Academy Award, I was just flabbergasted because I did not go into this project thinking that I was going to make something that would affect people emotionally like this. Getting nominated really isn't about me, it's about documenting a moment in time and the world's gonna see it. When you see films about the Civil Rights era, there's one slight area that always gets overlooked, Black joy.

Black joy humanizes us. And "Summer of Soul" is just an awesome look at beautiful people having fun in a way that you've never seen anyone from this era look.

♪ Gonna let my hair down in Harlem ♪

♪ 125th Street, now here I come ♪

Is Success Luck or Hard Work?

Threats to the U.S system and what we need to do

View All

Adventurers Jim & Tori Baird on their son’s FOXG1 diagnosis, life in the wild | National Geographic

Wesley, as challenging as some of our days might be with him, I wouldn’t want to change him for the world because he is just the happiest little thing. My name is Jim Baird and I am Tori Baird. We have two boys, Wesley and Hudson. Wesley is just a little…

Meet Kim, one of the creators of Khan Academy's AP US History lessons

I’ve been working on the U.S. history content here for more than two years now, and we have a team of experts who’ve been in the classroom for many years who have advanced degrees in U.S. history, who really rigorously write, tape, and edit each other’s w…

When The Housing Crash Will Happen

What’s up you guys? It’s Graham here, and if you thought the housing market was expensive, it got worse. Despite higher interest rates, record low affordability, and a 60% chance of recession, the housing market is now $2 trillion more expensive. That’s r…

Geoengineering: A Horrible Idea We Might Have to Do