Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century
 
Revolutionary
Socialism in the
21st Century
Patrice Lumumba signs the document granting independence to the Congo next to Belgian Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens
Patrice Lumumba signs the document granting independence to the Congo next to Belgian Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens. Public Domain image

Review | Soundtrack to a coup d’etat

David L

David L reviews Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat a film that uses jazz and contemporary voices to expose how Belgium and the US undermined the newly independent Democratic Republic of the Congo and engineered the assassination of its prime minister Patrice Lumumba.

As I sat down in front of one of the cinema screens at HOME in Manchester, I found myself managing my expectations in the back of my mind. I knew what the film Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat was ostensibly about from the description on the HOME website – a documentary film of the coup enacted by Belgium and the US in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the subsequent civil war and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first premier/prime minister of the newly independent former colony, all of which would be set to a jazz backing, hence the name. I knew it was the sort of thing I would be interested in, but that still didn’t stop the very small worry that I was managing in my head: that the next 150 minutes were going to be boring. Sometimes, when you watch or engage with left wing culture, you feel yourself to be doing so out of a sense of obligation. When watching a film like this, it begs the question: Did you stay till the end credits because you were engaged with what it had to say, or because you felt obliged to?

Luckily, with Soundtrack, you learn within the first few minutes you should be listening keenly to everything it has to say (or play). The film opens with a performance of We Insist! (more popularly known today as the Freedom Now Suite) by Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, two Black jazz artists from the US. Intercut with this footage are quotes from Maya Angelou’s Heart of a Woman detailing the building consensus to protest the coup at the UN in 1961 by approximately 60 black activists, including Lincoln and Roach. This sets the tone for the rest of the film – jazz of different varieties and musicians plays throughout (except for crucial moments when silence is needed) and the film will be using historical sources, both cinematic and literature. 

From this you notice there is no singular narrative voice (though apparently this film follows in a similar vein to the director Johan Grimonprez’s other works) – the story is told either via narration by actors or through the use of audio taken from the historical actors themselves. The film features excerpts from “My Country, Africa” by Lumumba’s speechwriter Andrée Blouin[1], “Congo Inc.” by In Koli Jean Bofane, “To Katanga and Back,” by Conor Cruise O’Brien[2], and audio memoirs by Nikita Khrushchev. The choice to narrate through these means is wise on two fronts – first of all being that it allows the Congolese involved to tell or retell this story in their own words and language. The second front we will come back to shortly.

With these tools at its disposal, the film lets loose a critical barrage on the West for its part in the murder of Lumumba and the subjugation of the DRC to imperialist and neo-colonial interests. Aside from Belgium and the US, who worked together to ensure the rich uranium mines remained under European control and supplied US nuclear development, it also calls to account the UN, and the UN “peace force” for their interventions, which essentially did nothing and let Lumumba be captured and eventually killed. As this article lays out, this was because the UN secretary general secretly agreed with the US in their assessment of Lumumba, despite their formal assurances otherwise to the latter.

It is here that the use of archival and historical sources proves most useful, in the sense they are the rope by which the imperialists hang themselves. It is a kind of dialectical montage of image and word which produces its most effective moments. Leaders from the US, Belgium and the UN make statements of peace and non-intervention, only to have quotations from their lackeys and henchmen in the CIA make clear how blatantly they lied. Smug interviews from grinning spies highlight the blunt hindsight which the film seeks to instill in our consciousness. The film never tells us what to think, it simply allows us to put two and two together. It is hard to take seriously any humanitarian rhetoric from the West in any historical period, but in the Congo it is hard not to get angry when the film reveals Belgium was hiring mercenaries from other settler colonial countries on the African continent. South African and Rhodesian accents abound, and one especially grim interview features a former Nazi speaking of the Congolese they massacred.

Throughout all of this, the jazz plays on. You might be led to believe that the use of Jazz here is the drawing of a straight connection – Black US art as a means of consciousness raising and radical culture by which we can approach subjects like the Congo and Lumumba. But it is here that the film takes (for me, at least) a surprising turn, as it slowly builds up its other object of critique – that of US jazz artists. And it spares no feelings as it takes some of the most famous jazz musicians to task. If for example, abstract art is to be forever held in shame for taking funding from the Congress for Cultural Freedom, then what can we say about Louis Armstrong, who became ‘America’s Jazz ambassador’, and even played in the Congo whilst the crisis was ongoing? 

The film plays very cleverly on its presumably western audiences expectations. In one of the earliest scenes, Nikita Kruschev speaks of how he dislikes jazz. You might expect him to be contrasted to the more hip and radical jazz artists in a negative light, but it is Kruschev who repeatedly voices opposition in the UN and calls for motions ending colonialism (though like all state leaders, he eventually plays politics like the rest of them). In comparison, many of the jazz artists portrayed earlier in the film come off as little more than what Chris Morris called ‘jesters of the court,’ doing very little to actually challenge the status quo. Very few US citizens come out of the film unscathed, whether Black or white. Aside from Lincoln and Roach, and to some extent Nina Simone, the only one who does is Malcolm X, whose speeches illustrate the film’s internationalist politics the most clearly.

The film ends at Lumumba’s death. It is a solemn note to end on, and the film goes on to remind us through the inclusion of Tesla and Apple adverts that the exploitation of the Congo for technological resources goes on today. What is to be done then? It seems there is little hope to be found, especially with the continuation of violence in eastern Congo. The film gives no easy answers. But at the very least, it establishes the baseline for our action with the protest carried out by Lincoln and Roach and others. In a similar vein to Rosa Luxemburg, who said ‘the most revolutionary act is and forever remains to say loudly what is,’ at one point in the film the Congolese writer In Koli Jean Bofane, whilst remembering how his mother saved the lives of her children by shaming soldiers about to murder them, states that we must always speak out. It is not much, but it is where we must start.


[1] narrated by Marie Daulne aka Zap Mama

[2] narrated by Patrick Cruise O’Brien
Read more about Patrice Lumumba’s legacy here.

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