From 18 March, the documentary candidate for the Oscar ‘Soundtrack to a Coup of Etat’, distributed by I Wonder Pictures, in Italy with the title ‘Soundtrack for a coup d’etat’, will be available on Iwonderful first channels. Directed by Johan Grimonprez, the film intertwines the explosive wave of jazz (with artists of the caliber of Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone and Miles Davis) and the decolonization, in a historical story that rewrites the episode of the Cold War that brought the musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to sneak into the UN Security Council to protest against the assassination of the leader of the leader Congolese Patrice Lumumba.
The post-colonial struggle for the resources of the Congo is marked not only by imported archive materials recovered, but above all by music, by the jazz that has characterized the explosive wave of those years, which vivifies and makes the story of the story understandable.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, the plot
In January 1961 the new president of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated with the complicity of Belgium and the United States, to plunder the wealth of the country. Louis Armstrong is on tour in the Congo and unconsciously transforms into the parable for the first post-colonial state of state in Africa, while other artists such as Nina Simone, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie wonders what their position is in their country, where racial segregation still applies. The Soviet leader Nikita Kruscev denounces the complicity of the United Nations to the General Assembly in the dismissal (and then assassination) of Lumumba. Here Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach burst in the UN building to protest. This film is a masterful story with multiple voices and rhythm of jazz and soul on how African self -determination was undermined in the 1960s. Oscar candidate 2025 for best documentary.
