June
6, 2003, 7:00 a.m. Wattstax,
Again
Joy
and pain at “the Black Woodstock.”
he
Watts riots in 1965 were one of the first alarm bells signaling that the
new civil-rights era would have an underside. Just the year before, Lyndon
Johnson had signed the historic Civil Rights Act; 1965 brought its successor,
the Voting Rights Act. The quiet revolution wrought by Dr. King and his
supporters was transforming America, but couldn't forestall the madness
of arson in the inner cities.
Seven years later,
on August 20, 1972, the Watts Summer Festival observed the anniversary
of the riots with a seven-hour concert, called Wattstax, of African-American
music at the L.A. Coliseum. That concert was the subject of the 1973 documentary
Wattstax,
which is now being re-released to theatres with new footage. The new material
includes the concert's final performer, Isaac Hayes; his renditions of
"Shaft" and "Soulsville" had been deleted from the
1973 version because of copyright issues. Both of the Isaac Hayes songs
are terrific, but they are not the chief reason anyone should see this
film. Wattstax is worth seeing because it works, from start to
finish, as a concert movie — and also as an amazing time capsule
of African-American life and attitudes, A.D. 1972.
First, the music. The variety of genres represented — blues, gospel,
soul, rock, and funk — is impressive, as is the quality of the sound
(completely remastered) and the performances themselves. Among the highlights
are the Staple Singers' "Respect Yourself," the Rance Allen
Group's "Lying on the Truth," Johnny Taylor's "Jody's (Got
Your Girl and Gone)," and especially the devastating "Walking
the Backstreet and Crying" by blues great Little Milton.
Milton's lonely blues remind the viewer of what is being commemorated,
the pain amid the joy of music making; and this is where the film's time-capsule
aspect really kicks in. Interspersed among the music acts are clips of
the Watts neighborhood, including eye-opening interviews with residents.
Among them is one who believes that but for the riots, the white community
would not have paid attention to Watts; another focuses on the improvements
that have taken place; a woman provides a sad jolt by including, in her
litany of praise for African-American men, the assertion that "the
way he abuses me is beautiful."
The movie also has a brief visual montage of African-American History
101, including the famous clip in which Dr. King proclaimed, the night
before he was assassinated, "I'm not worried about anything. I'm
not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the
Lord." But the promised land he saw from that mountaintop would remain,
for too many, elusive. In this regard, it's entirely appropriate that
the master of ceremonies for Wattstax was none other than Jesse Jackson
— a man who has spent the three decades since 1972 pointing African
Americans simultaneously toward and away from the promised land, with
his mix of moral uplift and race-mongering blackmail.
"We may be in the slum," Jackson declared to the Wattstax audience,
"but the slum is not in us." It's words like these that made
an earlier generation — black and white alike — admire Jesse
Jackson; they seemed to point the way out of the racial and economic cul-de-sac
of the Seventies. We are not, he seemed to be saying, the product of our
environments; we are, rather, "Somebody." And he was, in saying
this, entirely correct. So who could have predicted, on that beautiful
Sunday afternoon in 1972, that the slum spirit, the "slum in us,"
would — through such violent media as gangsta rap — outlast
many of the slum buildings themselves? And that even as a black middle
class prospered, the harmful values of the slum would find a new audience
among affluent white kids seeking "authenticity" through pseudo-black
posturing?
The Afros and sideburns on display in Wattstax belong in the past;
but the music remains vibrant. So, sadly, do the issues raised by this
fine documentary.
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Watts riots in 1965 were one of the first alarm bells signaling that the
new civil-rights era would have an underside. Just the year before, Lyndon
Johnson had signed the historic Civil Rights Act; 1965 brought its successor,
the Voting Rights Act. The quiet revolution wrought by Dr. King and his
supporters was transforming America, but couldn't forestall the madness
of arson in the inner cities.
