2024 Black Sonic Evolutions
Watch List for Black Music Month
about BLACK MUSIC MONTH
In the United States, June is African American Music Appreciation Month! Created by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, this month celebrates the African American musical influences that comprise an essential part of our nation’s treasured cultural heritage.
Formerly called National Black Music Month, this celebration of African American musical contributions is re-established annually by presidential proclamation.
~ Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of African American History & Culture
the BLACK SONIC EVOLUTIONS (BSE) Watchlist continues our annual recognition of Black Music Month (June)
June is Black Music Month, and before we get further into Summer, we’re offering some films that not only meet the times we’re in, but remind us of the power of imagination, music, and radical organizing, and how our music cultures worldwide have historically fuelled our courage, endurance, and community power. Our annual BSE highlights of protest music movements and documentary films, focus on the strength of the Black Sonic as a global soundtrack for joy, liberation, and revolutionary actions for our collective human rights.
For a little history, in 2021 we partnered with LANGSTON Seattle, Henry Art Gallery, Wa Na Wari, and SIFF for a series of talks and shared viewings of music video filmmakers, and concert and visual histories of Black music. The Program was called: Black Spatial Elegance: new cinematic language of global black music, which was a dense and joyful program offered across 3 weeks of community curated music playlists and vibing through group discussions, celebrating artists who created visual and sonic cultures that hold our memories. In 2022, we shifted our focus to highlighting films across our social feeds which archive sonic cultural histories and the social revolutions they sparked throughout the diaspora. We also changed the name of our program to Black Sonic Evolutions.
Last year we screened Finding Fela at Northwest Film Forum with a reader list partnership with Loving Room Books on BOOKSHOP, curated by Kristine Clarke to fill out your library!
Black musicians and singers throughout the African Diaspora have gifted us lyrical and sonic inspiration that have ignited independence movements, evolutionary civil and human rights, revolutionary protests and sit-ins, organizations + mutual aid collectives, cultural belonging, ancestral memory, and upliftment. Black music documentaries and protest/ revolution films show Black liberation histories and the sounds of powerful social and political change.
Our selection of film productions range from 1973 - 2019, documenting Black music histories from the 1940s to present. They serve as celebratory and inspirational learning for us to broaden our knowledge of how Afrodescendant cultures have influenced the world at large, through Caribbean Calypso + Jamaican Reggae, Hip Hop, Country, Southern Rhythm and Blues, South African Soweto and Jazz, West African Afrobeats, the roots of Rock n’ Roll, Funk, Punk, Trip Hop, and more.
Crank your volume and your energy with these films! We need these music lessons more than ever!
2024 BLACK SONIC EVOLUTIONS Watchlist
Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony (2002)
Dir. Lee Hirsch
4 part documentary, 108 min
A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony is a 2002 documentary film depicting the struggles of black South Africans against the injustices of Apartheid.
documentary that uses exclusive interviews and rare, never-before-seen film footage to document the vital role that music played in the nearly half-century struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
Beat This: A Hip Hop History (1984)
Dir. Dick Fontaine
60 min
Beat This: A Hip-Hop History is a 1984 BBC documentary film about hip-hop culture, directed by Dick Fontaine. The cast includes Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc — the film includes footage from Herc's original dance parties — The Cold Crush Brothers, Jazzy Jay, Brim Fuentes, and The Dynamic Rockers. It is narrated by Imhotep Gary Byrd. Originally part of the Arena television series, it was among the first crop of documentaries about hip hop. (source: Letterboxd)
My Friend Fela (2019)
Dir. Joel Zito Araújo
94 min
My Friend Fela provides a new perspective on the Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, unravelled through the eyes of his close friend and official biographer, the African-Cuban Carlos Moore. The movie reveals the many influences and forces that shaped Fela’s extraordinary life: from the relationship he had with his mother to his problematic relationships with women, from his ties with his spiritual advisor Professor Hindu to Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. (Source: Cinando)
T’aint Nobody’s Bizness/Queer Black Divas of the 1920’s (2013)
Dir. Robert Philipson
29 min
Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters were among the biggest blues singers of their day. Their nights, however, belonged to them--and the ladies they shared them with. "T'Ain't Nobody's Bizness" presents the facts concerning the alternative sexualities of famous blues singers in a way that is unsensational yet entertaining.
Wattstax (1973)
Dir. Mel Stuart
98 min
A documentary film of the historical event "Black Woodstock" held in 1972 at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Organized by Stax Records, the Watts Summer Festival is a gathering of musicians and entertainers from the black community, brought together to remember the Watts Riots from seven years prior. Key performances include those of comedian Richard Pryor, and singers Isaac Hayes and Luther Ingram. Stuart also presents shots of the Watts streets and community along with the festival footage.
The Story of Lovers Rock (2011)
Dir. Menelik Shabazz
97 min
a feature length documentary tells the story of an era and a music that defined a generation in the late 70s and 80s in the UK. Lovers Rock is romantic reggae that was uniquely of Black and Caribbean British people. It developed from a small UK scene to become a global brand of music that provided a coping mechanism against a backdrop of racial tension and riots across the UK, as well as being a counterpoint to the male dominated 'roots' scene. The film combines live performances with some of the Kings and Queens of Lovers Rock with comedy sketches, interviews and archive material. Interviews include Denis Bovell, UB40, Levi Roots Linton Kwesi Johnson, Angie La Ma, Maxi Priest, Mykaell Riley with comedy sketches are provided by the likes of Eddie Nestor, Robbie G, Wayne Rollins, Glenda Jaxson. Rudi Lickwood, John Simmit., Annette Fagon.
A Band called Death (2012)
Dir. Mark Covino, Jeff Howlett
98 min
A Band Called Death is a 2012 American documentary film directed by Mark Christopher Covino and Jeff Howlett. about the 1970s rock band Death, and their new-found popularity decades after the group disbanded.
Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records (1980)
Dir. Nicolas Jack Davies
85 min
The legendary London record label Trojan Records played a leading role in the musical conquest of Great Britain by Jamaican music styles like Ska, Reggae, and Rocksteady. RUDEBOY is a film about the origins and ongoing love affair between Jamaican and British Youth culture. A film that explores the power of music to break down cultural barriers and change lives and the eventual birth of a modern multicultural society – all told through the prism of one the most iconic record labels in history, TROJAN RECORDS.
Array's 'Jewel's Catch One' (2016)
Dir. C. Fitz
85 min
JEWEL'S CATCH ONE directed by filmmaker C. Fitz celebrates the legacy of a legendary Los Angeles nightclub, Catch One, and the life-changing impact its owner, Jewel Thais-Williams, had on her community breaking down racial and cultural barriers and building the oldest black-owned disco in America.
Music Pictures: New Orleans (2022)
Dir. Ben Chace
72 min
showcases s four legacy portraits of four New Orleans music figures. Now in their 80s, Irma Thomas, Little Freddie King, Ellis Marsalis, and The Tremé Brass Band continue their practice, for the love of the music, in the city that made them who they are.
Roots, Reggae, Rebellion (2022)
Dir. James Hale
Writer & Presenter: Akala
59 min
In the 1970s, Jamaica came alive to the sounds of roots reggae. British rapper, poet and political commentator Akala tells the story of this golden period in the island's musical history, a time when a small group of musicians took songs of Rastafari, revolution and hope to the international stage.
Growing up in London, Akala's family immersed him in roots reggae from an early age so he has a very personal connection to the culture. It has informed his own songwriting, poetry and political worldview, but it's an upbringing that he now feels he's taken for granted.
In this documentary, Akala sets out to find out more about the music that has had such an impact on his life. He begins by exploring the music's origins in Jamaica, where it offered hope to ordinary people at a time when poverty, political violence and turmoil were ravaging the island. Artists like Bob Marley, Big Youth and Burning Spear began to write about suffering and salvation through Rastafari in their songs. Akala unpicks how all of this evolved.
Back in the UK, Akala reveals how the Jamaican artists and our own British roots reggae bands like Steel Pulse became a cultural lifeline for young black people who were experiencing racism and rejection in their own country. He shows how roots reggae also related to a wider audience, its revolutionary message connecting with an increasingly marginalised UK youth.
Also See our YouTube playlist for trailers + full length films.