Soundtrack To A Coup D’etat
Written and Directed by Johan Grimonprez
Unrated
Runtime: 2 hours and 30 minutes
In theaters November 1

by Christopher La Vigna, Staff Writer

As the 2024 Presidential Election comes closer and closer to finally ending, but looms over us no less oppressively, it’s easy for many of us in the States to become overwhelmed with the fear that the very core tenets of our democracy face extermination. Soundtrack To A Coup D’etat, the latest effort from documentary filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, serves up a sobering reminder that for many parts of the world, blood has been spilt for independence campaigns that have never reached fruition, and Western cheerleaders for democracy have a larger hand in these deferred dreams of freedom than they’d ever publicly admit.

The film centers around Patrice Lumumba, the first premier of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as other key figures in the fight for Congolese independence. It also concerns luminaries of the American jazz scene of the fifties and sixties such as Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone, and others. Regarding the latter group, the film explores the nuanced relationship these artists had with their home country. While their music often reflected the pain and complexity of the Black experience in America, and the fight for civil rights, their music was used as a tool by the U.S government to aggressively push American interests abroad. Early on in the film, Grimonprez highlights a quote from a 1955 New York Times article that sums it all up perfectly: “America’s secret weapon is a blue note in a minor key.” 

The film employs droves of archival footage, almost all of it scored to some variation of jazz music–everything from bebop to big band to Latin and even African jazz and blues–giving the footage of various U.N. Council meetings, interviews with heads of state, government operatives, etc, a strangely energized and decidedly sinister undertone. The viewer keeps waiting for some kind of violent crescendo on the screen to match the simmering tensions and explosions of baselines and drum beats. As the film eventually reaches the bloody conclusions of the CIA/Belgian backed coup to uninstall Lumumba, this promised payoff is delivered, but the music has faded to near total silence, a few scattered piano refrains and basslines at most.

Grimonprez eschews any singular omniscient voiceover to organize the historical narrative. Instead, the film relies on the archived speeches and testimonies of the various leaders and activists embroiled in the struggle to flesh out the story. Viewers might feel overwhelmed by the barrage of dismissive quotes from European ambassadors and CIA spooks, mixed with the righteous anger and persistent hope from various leaders and thinkers of color, who were ready to fight to the bitter end for their self determination. When the film intercuts between jazz and blues performances from musical icons like Nina Simone and Thelonious Monk to seas of white faces at an international conference, it communicates all the pain and frustration the radicals and average citizens of the day felt, sometimes without having to speak a single word.

The film lays bare the damning accounts of America and Europe’s craven interests in the Congo’s natural resources, such as uranium, which was mined for the first atomic bombs. The nasty truth behind American Exceptionalism and its opportunistic utility as a cultural export; hidden beneath our leader’s crowing about our rich cultural reserves is a desire to colonize the hearts and minds of the citizens of various African and Asian countries in order to make it all the easier for our the West to expand its empire, controlling resources and stunt the growing influence of the Soviets.

Around the fifty-five minute mark, the film seems content to grant us a brief moment of peace; Patrice Lumumba declares that Congo has been granted independence, and he is sure to state that the Congo and Belgium will continue to have a friendly relationship. It’s followed by shots of celebration and carefree music–a tune called the “Independence Cha-Cha”–Grimonprez then immediately undercuts this with an interview of a Belgian intelligence official, who casually reveals that several members of Lumumba’s cabinet were Belgian intelligence assets. The bitter truth sets in, and we are swiftly returned to our jazz-backed montage of European racism and state-sponsored terrorism. 

We listen in horror as first hand accounts of sectarian violence in the Congo are given from survivors; we watch even more horror as footage from a military execution plays out in silence. The film is as masterful as it is devastating.

These atrocities, contrasted with footage of Louis Armstrong being greeted warmly as he is sent by the State Department to perform a concert in the Congo as a “goodwill Ambassador,” paints a particularly sad picture of the jazz legend, making him appear to be nothing more than puppets for American imperialism; flashy entertainment propped up in front of the masses in order to distract them from the nefarious destabilization efforts being executed in the background.  

While we also see them push back–Armstrong cancels a trip to the Soviet Union to protest his disgust over heightened racial violence in the South, Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach lead a group to storm the U.N. General Assembly to protest Lumumba’s assassination– it’s glaringly obvious that they’re being used without fully knowing the situation in the region he’s been dispatched to. Indeed, the documentary makes a point of stating that Armstrong later felt like he’d been used as a smokescreen, and threatened to renounce his citizenship and move to Ghana. One gets the sense that this was met with, at best, a shrug. The powers that be had already gotten their way, after all.

Soundtrack to a Coup D’etat offers no respite for all the harrowing cruelty, racism, and greed it displays. By the end, it has moved from the  late sixties, transporting us to scenes of civil war unfolding in the Congo today. The pain and betrayal of the United Nations failure to live up to its stated purpose and principles reverberate all the way from 1961 to our turbulent present day. It demands that you listen to the song its playing, equal parts maddening and saddening, and in its quieter moments, prods you to be aware, to stand up, to act out against the tyranny of those that oppose true freedom when it clashes with their commercial interest. America scored its imperialism with jazz; what will the soundtrack to the revolution sound like?