Soul to Soul

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Soul to Soul was a concert by American rhythm and blues , soul , jazz and rock musicians on March 6, 1971 in Accra , Ghana . It's also the name of a documentary of the same name from the same year.

concert

After declaring independence in 1957, Ghana made great efforts to establish contacts with Afro-American artists. Artists like Maya Angelou , W. E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore lived in the African state for some time. Angelou had the original idea of ​​having a number of Afro-American artists perform to celebrate Independence Day. The idea was finally implemented with the support of the Ghana Arts Council. A successful concert by James Brown in Nigeria in 1970 gave the implementation a boost.

Of the invited musicians, Wilson Pickett was the most famous star in Ghana. Other musicians such as Aretha Franklin , James Brown , Booker T. & the MG's , Louis Armstrong and Marion Williams did not accept the invitation.

The concert was held in Black Star Square (now Independence Square) on the coast and lasted 14 hours and ended at 6:45 in the morning with a gospel from The Voices of East Harlem.

The performing musicians, including Wilson Pickett, Ike & Tina Turner , Les McCann and Eddie Harris , The Staple Singers , Santana , with Willie Bobo and Roberta Flack, represented a wide musical spectrum.

Some critics claimed that Santana, who had only one African in the band, had the most African sound of any non-African band.

There were also numerous African groups such as Guy Warren , The Damas Choir directed by Ishmael Adams , Charlotte Dada , Kwa Mensah , The Kumasi Drummers , The Aliens , Ghana's most famous rock band and The Anansekromian Zounds .

Les McCann and Eddie Harris played part of their performance with the Ghanaian musician and medicine man Amoah Azangeo .

Movie

The concert was filmed and released in August 1971. In addition to the actual concert, the film also shows how the musicians dealt with the local population in the days before the concert. The film was shown in small editions for the next two years but was not commercially successful.

The Grammy Foundation, which had set itself the task of preserving important film documentaries about music, set up a program from which the restoration of the film was funded. The film was released on DVD in 2004, but without the appearances of Roberta Flack and Santana. A CD of the concert was also released.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Diverse - Soul To Soul . www.cdstarts.de. Retrieved October 28, 2009.