Johan Grimonprez

Recently, I sat down with Johan Grimonprez, the filmmaker of the new documentary film, “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” and he discussed the content of this very important documentary that looks at the assassination of Patrice Lamumba, the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We talk about how the film covers Malcolm X bringing the Cuban Revolutionaries, headed by Fidel Castro, to the Hotel Theresa in Harlem where they ended up staying. We discussed the importance of the Pan African Movement during African Independence as well as the solidarity in the Non Aligned Movement of the Global South. We also talk about how the film interweaves the politics of the Jazz community at the time, where Satchmo, Nina Simone, and Dizzy were serving American interests before and after Lamumba’s assassination, and musicians like Abby Lincoln and Max Roach were bitterly protesting Jim Crow, segregation, police terrorism, and colonialism. “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” is a very important film for us to see major world events that are still shaping the world that we live in today.