Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

After acclaimed essays such as dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) and Double Take (2009), Johan Grimonprez now unravels the decolonization of the Congo. He succinctly sets out the international context of the Cold War, the American civil rights movement and the Non-Aligned Movement in the UN, before zooming in on the murder of Congo’s first democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba, in 1961 and the direct involvement of the Belgian and US governments, which feared losing their grip on Congolese uranium.

Grimonprez spices this pressure cooker of colonialism, capitalism and racism with jazz. “Jazz ambassador” Louis Armstrong was sent to Congo by the US as a smokescreen for overthrowing Lumumba’s government, while musicians such as Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crashed the UN Security Council to protest Lumumba’s murder.

Meanwhile Armstrong and other jazz ambassadors face a painful dilemma: How to represent a country where racial segregation is still the law of the land? Music propels this jazzily edited documentary, which won the Special Jury Award at Sundance, into the present in which Congo still suffers from the neo-colonial battle over resources.