Was murdered by neocolonialism in 1961: the Congolese revolutionary leader Patrice Lumumba.
Photo: Grandfilm/Harry Pot Anefo Dutch National Archives
It is not a new knowledge that the essay film can show connections with its connection from assembly technology and extreme subjectivity that usually remain hidden. One of the most interesting sociological texts about the Weimar Republic is Walter Ruttmann’s film “Symphony of a big city” (1927). And in a similar way, one could say about Raoul Pecks essay film “I am not your Negro” (2016) that few political science analyzes get racist violence in the US Haitian filmmaker.
The essay film “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” does not have to fear the comparison with such work. Johan Grimpronez, a multimedia artist born in Belgium in 1962, tells him in parallel two completely independent stories from 1960. The first is about black jazz musicians in the racist segregated US had just freed himself from the Belgian foreign rule at the time.
It cannot be overlooked that Grimponez originally comes from media art and keeps little of conventional narrative. In 1997 he was a guest at Documenta with “Dial History”, an essay on aircraft ranks and disasters, after which he worked primarily as a curator and installation artist. “Soundtrack to a coup d’Etat”, however, is based on an actually classic documentary film. Grimponez reconstructs the plot that organized the former colonial power of Belgium and the USA in 1960 against the Congolese revolutionary leader Patrice Lumumba. At that time, the “Free West” feared that Lumumba and the Ghanaian socialist Kwame Nkrumah could start a Pan African unification movement that would make access to the continent to access the top. As is now very occupied, Lumumba was only fought at the instigation of Belgium and the United States, then discontinued and finally murdered.
“Soundtrack to a coup d’Atat” traces these events and also illuminates a few less well-known details-such as the fact that the then UN Secretary of General Dag Hammarskjöld, a Swedish politician close to social democracy, was actively involved in the conspiracy against Lumumba . Remarkably, however, Hammarskjöld’s cooperation was not rewarded. Just a few months after Lumumba, Hammarskjöld died even in a plane crash. From South African government files, it is now known that the crash of western secret services, mining groups and a South African paramilitary organization was initiated because Hammarskjöld was considered unreliable.
The remarkable thing about Grimponez ‘film is that this political documentary strand is told, so to speak, in a passerby. The film draws the real force from the fact that it keeps interrupting the description of the events in the Congo. As strange as it sounds: First and foremost, “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” is a music film that accompanies the sizes of jazz on concerts and tours in the early 1960s. But what does jazz have to do with the Congo? Quite simply: While the musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach storm a meeting of the UN Security Council in New York in 1961 in protest against the murder of Lumumba, their colleagues will be Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie (without her Knowledge) sent from the CIA “as a jazz ambassador” on a promo tour to polish up the shaped image of the racist USA in the global south.
Grimponez also wants to show the topicality of the events. Because as the conquest of the city of Goma showed by the “rebels” force M23 a few days ago, the violence spiral in the Central African country continues to this day. While in the 1960s it was primarily about the bomb-capable Congolese uranium that the United States had already used for the construction of the Hiroshima bomb and wanted to continue to secure the independence of the Congo, it is now above all the one for the IT Industries necessary minerals and rare earths that keep the war going.
In this respect, “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” can also be seen as an educational film about the world market and postcolonial rule. But at the same time, Grimponez ‘essay film is also a very entertaining jazz piece. Daniel Denvir, maker of the English-language theory podcast “The Dig”, wrote a few days ago: “One of the best films I have ever seen.” A judgment that nothing can be added.
“Soundtrack to a coup d’Etat”: Belgium, France, Netherlands 2024. Book and Director: Johan Grimonprez. 150 minutes. Runs in the cinema.