They couldn’t stop our singing

TOWARD THE end of the remarkable new film, Soundtrack for a Revolution, Julian Bond summarizes the civil rights movement as "ordinary people doing extraordinary things."

A persistent danger swirls around this history--the danger that the participants will be canonized, effectively placing them beyond the reach of present generations ("They were so united, so brave...so not like us"). Soundtrack, a film that tells the story of the civil rights movement through its music, reminds us that the people who waged that struggle were just as frail, just as fearful of injury and death as you and I.

But in every meeting, on every march and even behind bars, Soundtrack shows us how the songs of the civil rights movement gave ordinary people like John Lewis, Dorothy Cotton or Charles McDew--who are among the many participants to contribute on-camera interviews--the courage, the solidarity and the confidence to do such extraordinary things.

"They can put you in jail," Lewis muses, "but they can't stop you from singing."

Many of what became movement songs were really revised Negro spirituals. At times, the old lyrics were preserved, but the meaning shifted. "Wade in the Water" became a call to leave the "shore of comfort" and get involved in the movement. When some said that young people shouldn't participate in protests, children sang "This Little Light of Mine" even louder as they marched.

In other cases, the lyrics were revised. When, in 1960, tens of thousands of students launched lunch counter sit-ins to challenge segregation, "I'm Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table," became "I'm Gonna Sit at the Woolworth Counter." Often, new lyrics were improvised on the spot, as needed. Facing police dogs, activists sang, "I Ain't Afraid of Your Dog," or being hauled off to jail, "I Ain't Afraid of Your Jail."

The role of a white couple--Guy and Candie Carawan--in teaching and spreading these songs is a fascinating twist of history. When they taught "We Shall Overcome" to the founding convention of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, it quickly became the movement's anthem.

SOUNDTRACK SLIPS effectively between the first-person testimonies of participants, to black-and-white archival footage, to in-studio sessions with professional musicians. Wyclef Jean, Angie Stone, John Legend, The Roots, Joss Stone and a host of other artists cover movement songs in their distinct, respective styles.

The in-studio sessions lift the songs temporarily out of context, but with the assistance of celebrity singers (and often with instrumental support), we are offered an opportunity to dwell on a particular song--on the poetry and resonance of its lyrics, the mood and emotion of its tune.

Certainly Jean's "Here's to the State of Mississippi" stands out. The studio performance, with a ripping guitar and angular bass, is spliced with the historical footage and interviews, rather than standing alone. The effect transports the viewer to an emotional state where the murder of three civil rights workers--Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner--lands with tremendous force.

The constant presence of personal danger for activists is further reinforced by the dramatic use of titles and photographs. A slick collage of student mug shots pulls back to impress us with the scale of arrests. Later, a series of photos fade in and out with titles that reveal the manner of death--"shot," "bludgeoned," "bombed," "burned" and so on.

Of course the death that hit the movement--and the nation--the hardest was that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Here, Soundtrack dwells on the tragedy of King's assassination on April 4, 1968, but it does so at the expense of exploring the radical turn in King's work in the last year of his life: King's stance on Vietnam, or even of the Memphis strike with which he made common cause.

In 1967, King blasted the war in Vietnam and called the American government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." In 1968, he joined striking sanitation workers in Memphis and called for a radical redistribution of America's wealth. Perhaps it's not fair to expect this film to cover King's political trajectory, but this reviewer can't help but think that those omissions may have been necessary to pull off the film's final frame--Barack Obama's inauguration ceremony.

While there can be no doubt that Obama's election was made possible by the struggle of the previous generation, it's becoming harder for people to swallow that his administration is the "realization of King's dream" (as it is often put), especially given the president's escalation of the war in Afghanistan and his failure to address Depression era-level unemployment in Black America.

Still, the strength of this film lies in the power of music, and its ability to communicate something essential about the Black struggle in America. "The music is how we know who we are," comments a wistful Harry Belafonte. Through song, we are drawn inside the activists' roller coaster of emotions. What we hear in Soundtrack is the sound of ordinary people summoning the inner strength to do extraordinary things.