Soundtrack is a tour de force of editing. Editing to music is an art, and Grimonperez and his editor, Rik Chaubet, weave the jazz notes of the score into the found footage with aplomb. In truth, the jazz link in what is essentially a film about Patrice Lumumba and the Congo is slightly tenuous, anchored on the one visit Louis Armstrong paid to the country shortly before Lumumba’s murder. But this is also a film about connections: linking Lumumba to Castro to Malcolm X to Thelonious Monk, who briefly mentions how he went to check out the activist. What were the connections between the jazz greats and politics? The clips of Dizzy Gillespie’s satirical presidential bid are marvellous, but the deeper resonance of the musicians’ political consciousness is mandated mostly by the sound of their music. Clearly Nina Simone’s lyrics are charged with a political anger, but this becomes the backdrop, or soundtrack, to the tale of Lumumba. There is a verve and a jazz feel to the film, it’s a jazz edit, and this bowls the viewer along through the film’s two hours plus. It might also be noted that the only actually filmed footage for Soundtrack to a Coup, rather than found footage, would appear to be of Koli Jean Bofane, both reading from Congo Inc, and narrating a harrowing story from his childhood.
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