Screening of the Academy-award nominated documentary “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.”

The African Studies Program and WFHB community radio present a screening of Johan Grimonprez’s film about jazz diplomacy, decolonialism, and empire during the cold war. When newly-elected Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in 1961, jazz icons Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach protested at the UN Security Council.

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.