music

Casa Montjuic's slow but steady programme of film screenings is never less than interesting, and this is another case in point. The Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez's fascinating documentary from last year delves into what he sees as the bizarre musical background to the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the leftist Congolese leader who was causing consternation in a Washington concerned he might withhold the country's uranium reserves, and worried by the "United States of Africa" idea he was pushing.

This strange new "Cool War", as Grimonprez sees it, involved the CIA trying to export jazz music by Black American musicians to Africa, in order to win favour with the population. The film suggests that Lumumba’s murder was the result of a conspiracy led by the US, UN and Congo's former colonial power, Belgium, and that Armstrong's African tour of the early 1960s, which was sponsored by the US State Department, was used as a smokescreen for its planning and execution. An extraordinary and troubling tale.