Proctors and Union College Film Studies Present: Soundtrack to a Coup D’etat (2024)

Part of the short series DECOLONIAL BEATS!

While serving as cultural ambassadors in 1960, jazz legends Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Nina Simone were unknowingly cast as decoys in a CIA plot to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the first leader of the newly freed Democratic Republic of Congo. Exciting musical performances by all three artists are incorporated into the telling this incredible story, along with historical news footage, classic Blue Note album covers, key period texts and additional jazz performances such as Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln’s famed “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite.” There is so very much more to this furious masterpiece of film storytelling.
Perhaps Alissa Wilkinson of the New York Times summed it up best: “Black jazz musicians (like Armstrong, Simone, Gillespie… and Duke Ellington) are sent to perform around the world as “ambassadors” of American good will and freedom, yet segregation is still the law back home. Miles Davis, Fidel Castro, Malcolm X and others also weigh in. Not rated. 150 minutes.