Directed by Denis Sanders, Soul to Soul was released in August 1971.[1] The film consists of extensive excerpts from the concert performances, along with documentary footage of the musicians interacting with local Ghanaians in the days before the show.[2]
Concert
Ghana, after declaring its Independence on 6 March 1957, had made a variety of efforts to connect with African diasporans, some of whom—including Maya Angelou, W. E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore—lived in the West African nation for a time. In the mid-1960s, Angelou approached the government of Kwame Nkrumah and suggested bringing a number of African-American artists to Ghana for the annual independence celebrations. Nkrumah was deposed before action could be taken, but when the American father-son team of Ed Mosk and Tom Mosk approached the Ghana Arts Council in 1970 with an idea for a concert, the Council agreed. At 1970 West Africa concert by James Brown, Brown performed in Lagos, Nigeria, but he did not perform in Ghana.
Several at the show remarked that the band Santana, despite having only one black member, played the most "African-sounding" music of the night. Some have argued that Santana's merger of Latin rhythms with rock music strongly influenced the development of Afrobeat.[5]
Musicians
The American artists were mostly African-American and represented a variety of musical styles:
"Soul to Soul" will hook you. We defy anybody to watch the final half hour of this color documentary of a soul and gospel music concert, performed in Ghana, without tapping a foot. But it is the sea of rapturous black faces, those of the visiting American artists and their Ghana audiences, that makes this movie a haunting experience … Mainly and compactly, the film sticks to the concert, brilliantly evoking the performances and crowd reactions in a flow of closeups and panoramic shots, to the stabbing, pounding pulse of the music.[1]
Home video
The film was eventually restored thanks to a program by the Grammy Foundation that seeks to preserve important films about music, and it debuted again in February 2004 at an event at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was released on DVD on 24 August 2004. The new release does not include any performances by Roberta Flack, who requested their removal.[7] But it does include a soundtrack album on CD, which features tracks from all the U.S. performers with the exception of Santana and Flack, plus the Kumasi Drummers, the Damas Choir, and Kwa Mensah.
^Arts Council of Ghana, Soul to Soul, Black Star Square, Accra, Ghana, 6th March, 1971 : with American and Ghanaian soul, R&B, gospel, jazz, latin rock and dance groups, featuring Wilson Pickett (and others) : M.C., Mike Eghan, Accra : Moxon Paperbacks, 1971. OCLC6030924.
Years given are for the recording(s), not first release, except where noted. As Les McCann Ltd is often used in the titles for the albums up to 1964, this has been omitted.
