Review of the 2024 documentary film 'Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat'.
For a film that was two and a half hours long it was deftly edited and light of touch. There was so much material, so many characters, and such a complex knot of arguments that there was very little room for the music. Nina Simone got more screen time than others for defiantly singing and playing piano on 'Wild Is The Wind' over images of Patrice Lumumba, which struck home. As images of Lumumba, leader of the newly independent Congo, was filmed isolated as power ebbed away from him. But the glimpses of the other musicians, Louis Armstrong, Max Roach with singer Abe Lincoln, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Eric Dolphy, Ornate Coleman, Charles Mingus, Miriam Makeba, and Melba Liston, were more like amuse bouches of the artists concerned as the clips were squeezed into the film alongside footage of Malcolm X speaking so clearly that he could only be a radical. The main narrative the film, a CIA coup as seen mostly from outside of the planning of it, took up most space as the film followed the course set for it by the CIA, and Eisenhower's public pronouncements. The US government saw to it that the musicians could not recognise themselves as the 'window dressing' they were sent in as amid the fog of the cold war. But there was one core argument that stood out loud and clear, for all that a lot more could have been said about it.
In today's international politics there are many Trump-style arguments about 'seeking rare earth elements'. In 1942 the equivalent arguments about seeking rare earth elements were about America seeking supplies of uranium 235, which was mined in the Katanga, a province of Southern Congo. The Belgians still controlled that region. The mines were solely owned by the Belgian royal family. The Belgians offered the uranium to the Americans who made the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with it.
Fast forward to 1959/60 where by some odd international slights-of-hand that are depicted/explained in the film, Patrice Lumumba won the independence of The Congo in a vote ratified at the United Nations. Belgium appeared to concede the victory in public. The king of Belgium, King Baudouin would show a different hand soon enough. There was excited talk of 'a united states of Africa' where, as other newly independent African states gained independence and could vote as a block in the UN, they might all form some sort of union. The first effect of Lumumba's rule was for the Belgians to deprive the new leader of the greatest part of the wealth creating capacity of the country, with the connivance of the American secret services. After that an American counter coup was mounted to oust Patrice Lumumba, where what clear news there was was both confusing and dismaying.
The film stuttered to a stop as the Americans complete prosecuting their cold war against communism within the United Nations, where for them communism meant any creed or value that deviated from their covertly planned empire of greed. and their greed meant 'freedom'.
The film left Krushchev in power for a few short years. He was replaced By Leonid Brezhnev. Swedish economist Hammarskjöld remained in place as secretary the United Nations and was on the side of the African nations, but would be dead before the end of 1963. And the USA and Belgium having driven several teams of nuclear powered coaches and horses through the fragile credibility of young United Nations Assembly, put paid to the aspirations of many of the newly independent African countries who had thought that they could steer the United Nations assemblies towards shifting the terms of trade and wealth in their favour. The American Empire would not be that easily swayed.
But it was good to see moving images of Fidel Castro meeting with many like minded world leaders of the day, including Gamel Nasser president of Egypt, even when both were silent and they were at the United Nations in New York mostly for the photo opportunities.
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