THE NITTY GRITTY: Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) (dir by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, 112mns, Hulu, USA)
Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's documentary on 60's & 70's music pioneer Sylvester Stewart and his seminal band Sly & The Family Stone is both familiar and unique.
Familiar because we've seen this doc of a music star's rise and fall before. Unique because Thompson wants to drill down deeper. He wants the audience to understand "the undiscussed stresses American black stars carry when they breakthrough to mainstream success."
Like Thompson's 2021 Academy Award winning doc SUMMER OF SOUL (also on Hulu) about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, SLY LIVES! meets viewers "at the intersection of culture shaping music, the socio-economic furnace that birthed it, and the things we can learn."
Sylvester Stewart, aka Sly Stone, and his band the Family Stone created profoundly influential American rock-pop-funk-soul music. Songs including "DANCE TO THE MUSIC," "THANK YOU," "FAMILY AFFAIR," and "EVERYDAY PEOPLE" receive constant rotation and are repeatedly sampled by successive generations.
Sly and the Family Stone was groundbreaking with its integrated membership—men, women, Black, white—and inspired artists like Prince to understand that "the visual of the music and band were a key part OF the music."
The trajectory from euphoric peak to tragic decline by the mid-1970s raises profound questions about artistic sustainability. Thompson does an admirable job weaving together biographical info of Sly's life quickly in the first act to get us where we need to be.
The director peppers interviews with artists including Chaka Khan, George Clinton, Andre 3000, Q-Tip, and D'Angelo, who offer vulnerability discussing fame and personal struggles.
D'Angelo observes that white musicians often enjoy generational wealth transfer, while "black artists have such a harder road, such a more complicated path."
The documentary concludes with a final word from the great musician revealing moral and ethical self-awareness even above the entire dialogue we've been engaged in.
You are dancing for at least half of it to tracks so scaldingly brilliant, you liquify. Yet reflection afterward prompts wondering whether the nation can create a healthier environment for Black artists.
