b'The Harlem Cultural FestivalGets Noticed Decades Later in Questloves Summer of SoulMaplewoods Lizzy McGlynn helps guide the films contextBY DONNY LEVITA ugust 15, 1969. You may not be able to remember thePark would feature Stevie Wonder, David date,butyoucertainlyknowthenameofthatmusicRuffin, and Gladys Knight and the Pips, event which was attended by 400,000 people on a dairywho were performing as part of the Har-farm in the Catskills. Woodstock is ubiquitous as a cul- lem Cultural Festival, a celebration of Afri-tural and counter-cultural touchstone. can American culture and music. Some re-Now lets back up one month. ferred to the event as Black Woodstock.July 20, 1969. Broadcast journalist and anchormanTheparkrenamedMarcusGarvey Walter Cronkite was reporting live as Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Some- Park in 1973was packed with ebullient where between 125 to 150 million people were glued to their screens to witnessHarlem neighbors and concertgoers. But those images and hearwhenitcametocelebratingthemoon thevoicesofastro- landing, the responses were less than en-nauts Neil Armstrongthusiastic.and Buzz Aldrin nar- The cash they waste as far as Im con-rate those historic mo- cerned getting to the moon could have fed ments. Cheers eruptedpoor, Black people in Harlem and all over throughout the coun- this country, says one Harlem resident, in try, including sponta- response to a reporters question. Never neous revelry in Cen- mind the moon, lets get some of that cashThe impressive list of performers for the Harlem Cultural Festival.tralPark.Celebrantsin Harlem.gushed to news report- Footage from these events is one of many engrossing sequences in Summer ersastheastronautsof Soul, a newly released documentary directed by Ahmir Questlove Thomp-collectedmoonrocksson. Until now, the Harlem Cultural Festival has gone largely unnoticed. The onthenewlynamedfilm chronicles and explores the event, six weekends of Black music which took Tranquility Base. place in the summer of 1969. And Maplewoods Lizzy McGlynn, who served as Inaparkfurtherthe films archival producer, had a major hand in putting that archival sequence northinManhattan,together.anotherstunningcel- Ive spent loads of years doing all kinds of different projects. And it got to the ebrationwastakingpoint where I becamein my small little worldknown for being able to find place.Butthemoonthings, says McGlynn when asked about how she defines her job as an archival rockshadabsolutelyproducer. I come from a researchers background and you just want to discover nothing to do with it. everything about a subject from all points of viewand synthesize it togetherOn that very sameThis footage is a perfect example of what an archivist does and why Lizzy is so day,astageinHar- good at it, says Robert Fyvolent, one of the three producers credited on the film. lemsMountMorrisFrom my perspective, an archivist has to know where to look and obviously Lizzy 38/ matters magazine / fall 2021'