How do you combine performances of the greatest jazz artists of the 20th century with 1960s geopolitical African history?
Belgian director Johan Grimonprez has done exactly that in a riveting two-and-a-half-hour film, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat. The documentary records the events and players that led to the independence of what had been the Belgian Congo, and to the overthrow of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Republic of the Congo. It was nominated for a 2025 Academy Award for best documentary feature.
Using mid-century film clips, oral recordings, and newspaper and literary commentaries—rapidly interspersed with the sounds of jazz musicians and singers—he tells the story of secret international interventions into the internal affairs of a new sovereign African nation.
Emerging independently in a new Africa of the 1950s and 1960s and rich in raw materials and minerals, the Congo was not to be left alone by either western powers or the leaders of the Soviet Union. The film brings to light the roles of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Secretary General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld, Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev, and the King of Belgium among others who competed for monetary profits and political influence, eventually leading to the overthrow and death of Lumumba.
The film’s jazz sequences emphasize both the connections between American black performers and the origins of their sounds in African cultures, and the naïve involvement of jazz artists as American envoys to Africa as screens to actual CIA initiatives in the Congo.
Rik Chaubet’s unrelenting editing is unique in its 150-minute presentation of the conditions surrounding the coup that removed the Congo’s first democratic premier. Quick clips of Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie, Miriam Makeba, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald and many others are intertwined with scenes of an American president, lying Belgian royals, the Soviet Premier pounding his fists or visiting Disneyland, a sincere and charismatic Patrice Lumumba, and so on.
You don’t have to be a jazz fan or a history buff to be held by this movie, which has garnered a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is a mesmerizing, captivating film.