Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Johan Grimonprez. Andrée Blouin ©Terence Spencer:Popperfoto

Johan Grimonprez | Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

Name: Johan Grimonprez | Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Start: 2025-03-11T18:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-03-11T18:00:00-04:00

March 11, 2025, 6:00 pm

MIT E15-070
Wiesner Building
20 Ames Street
Cambridge, MA 02142

Film screening of Oscar® nominated Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat and conversation with filmmaker Johan Grimonprez.

Jazz and decolonization are entwined in Johan Grimonprez’s Oscar® nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film historical rollercoaster that rewrites the Cold War episode that led musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.

It is 1961, six months after the admission of sixteen newly independent African countries to the UN, a political earthquake that shifts the majority vote from the colonial powers to the Global South. As Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe in indignation at the UN’s complicity in the overthrow of Lumumba, the US State Department swings into action by sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup.

Featuring excerpts from “My Country, Africa” by Andrée Blouin (narrated by Marie Daulne aka Zap Mama), “Congo Inc.” by In Koli Jean Bofane, “To Katanga and Back” by Conor Cruise O’Brien (narrated by Patrick Cruise O’Brien), and audio memoirs by Nikita Khrushchev.

Following the screening, Johan will be joined by Amah Edoh for a conversation. Amah is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the production of knowledge about Africa, and on how “African-ness” is produced across West Africa and Western Europe, both through objects and in bodies. Amah was Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at MIT from 2017 to 2022. She has researched and written on Dutch Wax cloth, a textile designed and manufactured in the Netherlands for West and Central African markets since the early 20th century, that has since become a highly prized textile in these regions. Her latest publication, forthcoming in American Anthropologist, is an autoethnographic exploration of how political and economic upheaval in Togo since the early 1990s impacted the Dutch Wax cloth trade and the Togolese women who, over the course of decades, had made the cloth into a significant cultural artifact in the country.

Part of the Spring 2025 Lecture Series. This event is presented as part of Artfinity, an Institute-sponsored event celebrating creativity and community at MIT. Artfinity is organized by the Office of the Arts.

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat poster

One February morning in 1961, singer Abbey Lincoln and drummer Max Roach crash the UN Security Council to protest the murder of prime minister Patrice Lumumba of the newly independent Congo. Sixty yelling protesters throw punches, slam their stilettos and provoke a skirmish with unprepared guards as diplomats look on in shock. Decolonization spins the world upside down, infusing it with a sense of hope.

Six months earlier, sixteen newly independent African countries are admitted to the United Nations, triggering a political earthquake that shifts the majority vote away from the old colonial powers. The Cold War peaks as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe on his desk at the UN General Assembly, in reaction to the neo-colonial power grab unfolding in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Denouncing America’s color bar and the UN complicity in the overthrow of Lumumba, he demands immediate decolonization worldwide.

To retain control over the riches of what used to be Belgian Congo, King Baudouin of Belgium finds an ally in the Eisenhower administration, which fears losing access to one of the world’s biggest supplies of Uranium, a mineral vital for the creation of atomic bombs. Congo takes center stage to both the Cold War and the scheme for control of the UN. The US State Department swings into action: Jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong is dispatched to win the hearts and minds of Africa. Unwittingly, Armstrong becomes a smokescreen to divert attention from Africa’s first post-colonial coup, leading to the assassination of Congo’s first democratically elected leader. Malcolm X stands up in open support of Lumumba and his efforts to create a United States of Africa while also reframing the freedom struggle of African Americans as one not for civil rights but for human rights, aiming to bring his case before the UN.

As Black jazz ambassadors are performing unaware amidst covert CIA operatives, the likes of Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Melba Liston face a painful dilemma: how to represent a country where segregation is still the law of the land.

Jazz and decolonization are entwined in this forgotten episode of the Cold War, where the greatest musicians stepped onto the political stage, and downtrodden politicians lent their voices as inadvertent lead singers. This story of the undermining of African self-determination is told from the perspective of Central African Republic women’s rights activist and politician Andrée Blouin, Irish diplomat and enfant terrible Conor Cruise O’Brien, Belgian-Congolese writer In Koli Jean Bofane, and Nikita Khrushchev himself.