Jazz and global history have never intertwined in such a compelling and convincing manner as in Johan Grimomprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, an engrossing documentary that examines how the great American art form and geopolitics collide in a nefarious chapter of Cold War history: the murder of Patrice Lumumba. The year is 1960, the Voice of America Jazz Hour broadcasts the likes of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie behind the Iron Curtain, while a wave of decolonization movements tears through the African continent and the struggle for civil rights marches on stateside. Beat by beat, director Johan Grimonprez traces Lumumba’s rise of the 36-year-old independence leader to become Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister—and how corporate and colonial interests, along with machinations at the United Nations, conspired in his assassination. Deeply researched, the film interweaves archival records, home movies, newly unearthed speeches by Lumumba, and published memoirs by Congolese activists and writers with the story of the Black jazz legends (Armstrong, Gillespie, Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln among others) who defined the era in more ways than one. Pulsating with the energy of the period, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat plays like both a dense historical text and a lively jazz concert while proving itself to be an invigorating piece of documentary filmmaking.
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