Happy Hump Day POU!
We certainly couldn’t do this series without paying tribute to the ultimate gathering of soul musicians in historic Watts!
The infamous WattStax concert was held at the Los Anageles Memorial Coliseum on August 20, 1972, and organized byMemphis’s Stax Records to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots. Wattstax was seen by some as “the Afro-American answer to Woodstock“. To enable as many members of the black community in L.A. to attend as possible, tickets were sold for only $1.00 each. The Reverend Jesse Jackson gave the invocation, which included Reverend William H. Borders, Sr.’s “I Am – Somebody” poem, which was recited in a call and response with the assembled stadium crowd.
Mel Stuart’s documentary of the epochal 1972 concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Featuring incendiary performances by Isaac Hayes, Albert King, Rufus and Carla Thomas, the Staple Singers, the Emotions, the Bar-Kays, and other buy viagra store greats of soul, R&B, and gospel — plus biting humor from a then little-known Richard Pryor —Wattstax is more than a concert film. It also captures a heady moment in mid-1970s, “black-is-beautiful” African-American culture, when Los Angeles’s black community came together just seven years after the Watts riots to celebrate its survival and a renewed hope in its future.
The first song played in concert is the “Star-Spangled Banner” performed by Kim Weston while the audience sits. Jesse Jackson then encourages the audience to raise their right fists in the air while he recites his poem “I Am Somebody“. Kim Weston follows with a performance of the “Black National Anthem”, “Lift Every Voice and Sing“. While she sings the audience becomes more invigorated, and people stand and continue to raise their fists in the air.
