From the moment he released «Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),» it was clear that Ahmir «Questlove» Thompson is a born documentary filmmaker. But there’s a special quality to Questlove’s music videos that only fully emerged in his second film, «Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius).» And I felt it even more strongly in «Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World),» Questlove’s video that opened the Tribeca Film Festival tonight on a note of uplifting nostalgia yet timeless joy.
In his films, Questlove brings not only his musician's perspective, but also knowledge favorite sounds. He knows and understands music from the inside, how each note can resonate in our pleasure centers. And this has a unique meaning in the case of Earth, Wind & Fire, since their music was a delightful synthesis (as Lionel Richie says in the film: «Funk was funk, but chords were jazzy, classical. And yet it relied on this tribal African rhythm." EWF created some of the most exhilarating songs of their era (their secret ingredient was a funk/soul fusion и pop music), and Questlove reveals this magic.
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I always love it when music documentaries feature critical voices (as they did in Lisa Cortez's Little Richard: I Am Everything). And while Earth, Wind & Fire doesn't feature official music critics (though there's plenty of spirited commentary from the likes of Barack and Michelle Obama, Jimmy Jam, Stevie Wonder, and Flea), Questlove fills that important space in a different way. The key critical voice in the film is his own . He analyzes the music, captures what was bold and beautiful about it, meticulously examines its sound and meaning, and he does this with every cut, every sound, and impeccably observed detail about how the music was created (the film's best editors are Andrew Morrow, Matt Cascella, and Tim Ziegler). As a documentarian, Questlove is not an innovator; he is a classicist, almost conservative in his approach. However, he is such an insightful director, with such a captivating understanding of his subject, that he is able to immerse the viewer directly in the music.
This is of great significance for Earth, Wind & Fire, because despite all the popularity and love the band has received—they've sold 100 million albums, released 16 Top 40 singles, and won six Grammy Awards—EWF never quite earned the place in the critical canon they deserved. Here's why I think so. Earth, Wind & Fire, to the point where it's Always There was his band, there was Maurice White, the drummer, vocalist, composer, and producer who assembled EWF and led them with virtuosic vision. White, who died in 2016, was a pop-soul giant. And yet, if you listed the following artists—James Brown, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Michael Jackson, Prince—I doubt many would jump up and say, «Where’s Maurice White on that list?» He was driving force Earth, Wind & Fire, but part of his intention was to present the band as a cohesive unit. And while White was a handsome guy, he wasn't necessarily a rock star (like the other artists). With his thinning hair and friendly smile, he came across as a man of the people; more like a behind-the-scenes scientist. soul of EWF than a demigod-star. But he was the guiding light of a genius. And in "Earth, Wind & Fire," Questlove tells the band's story, and the story of Maurice White, in a way that is both gripping and mesmerizing. He captures their rightful place in the pop cosmos.
White was born in Memphis in 1941 to a 17-year-old single mother who abandoned him and moved to Chicago when he was just five. He was raised by a man named Big Mama, but the trauma of abandonment never went away. Ten years later, he joined his mother in Chicago, where she had another family; suddenly, he had eight siblings. He became involved in the Chicago music scene, becoming the staff drummer at Chess Records (where he collaborated with composer and producer Charles Stepney, who would later become a member of EWF), which led to him joining the Ramsey Lewis Trio as a drummer at just 15.
White wrote jingles for commercials (a work that would have as much of an influence on his future compositions as Lou Reed's experiments with pop songwriting at Pickwick Records). But despite his esteemed place in the jazz world, he left it all to move to Los Angeles and pursue his dream of a band called Earth, Wind and Fire, which he named after the elements of his astrological chart (replacing "Air" with "Wind"). White was fascinated by astrology, meditation, numerology, Egyptology, and many of the hippie metaphysical ideas that flourished in California in the 1970s. He embraced the vision underlying it all—a utopian vision of a unified world, of which his small group was to express itself. The original Earth, Wind and Fire played jazz and improvised; their music sounded like a cross between Sly and the Family Stone and Sun Ra. But White, hungry for success, realized they weren't going to make it, so he fired the entire band and restarted it, starting all over again (and now enlisting his two siblings).
The new band Earth, Wind & Fire literally found their groove during a show at the Uptown Theater in Chicago, where White started playing a small African harp called a kalimba and layered the rest of the music on top of it. In the documentary, you see them and the crowd light up. But even that was just the basic sound. There's a stunning video of the band's early hit "Mighty Mighty," which inspires the dance moves on "Soul Train," but they didn't become the Earth, Wind & Fire we know until 1975, when White was invited to record the soundtrack for the film "That's the Way of the World." He brought in Charles Stepney to collaborate on composition and arrangement, and when you listen to the title track, it's breathtaking because you literally hear a whole new world. The sound is balm for the soul . And the song's lyrics, set to those pulsating beats ("A child is born with a heart of gold / The world makes his heart so cold"), represented the entire era of the civil rights movement condensed into two lines that, in their own way, felt as transformative as a Martin Luther King speech.
On that same album was a song called "Shining Star," and if you want to hear the difference between Sly and the Family Stone and Earth, Wind & Fire, it's right there. The rhythm of "Shining Star," built around that slurred intro, is brash, energetic funk; it's pure Sly. But if it was A Sly song, it would just keep going. The EWF vibe kicks in with the chorus («You’re a shining star, no matter who you are»), the chords suddenly bouncing, talking to each other like happy pills. The verse feels grounded; the chorus glides like a Boeing 747. In the film, Stevie Wonder shocks Questlove, who’s interviewing him, when Wonder admits that «I Wish,» released a year later, was heavily inspired by «Shining Star.» It’s audible; but how often do you hear Stevie Wonder admit to copying someone?
White's dream, and his vision, was for Earth, Wind & Fire to become bigger, tighter, more exciting, more melodic, more a celebration of the cosmic wonders of Afrofuturism (their album covers began to resemble Afrocentric dioramas mixed with alien visitations), with even more striking, open-chested costumes. He added a horn section and enhanced the band's stage presence, bringing in George Faison, the great Broadway choreographer of The Wizard of Oz, to choreograph the moves, and Doug Henning, the world's preeminent magician, to create such stunts as levitating Verdine White, the band's bassist, on his side while still playing bass (a truly stunning effect). It was a transcendental spectacle. Among the artists who came to see it all were Michael Jackson (who came to concerts with a notebook to jot down ideas) and Prince.
Maurice White preached a New Age vision that eschewed drugs and alcohol, but we get a fascinating glimpse into his complexities through his longtime partner, Marilyn White, who still treats him tenderly. In the film's final third, his troubled side begins to emerge. He was a lustful man who insisted on sleeping around on the road ("I'm a star," he told Marilyn). He fathered several illegitimate children and increasingly exploited the other band members, consistently underpaying them and leaving them uncredited. Philip Bailey, EWF's great, dazzling vocalist, speaks candidly of his anger at White. And the entire film, while a true celebration of EWF's music, defies the category of music documentaries as positive hagiography. Questlove is too humanistic to soften Maurice White's contradictions. They only make the film's story more memorable.
At one point, White became convinced he was being visited by aliens. It was part of his '70s mystical obsession, but according to the film, it was partly out of this belief that he created the song "Fantasy," which was a revelation to me, as it's my favorite Earth, Wind & Fire song. Questlove includes it in the end credits (admire its incredible beauty). However, he's right to close the film with a magnificent group meditation on the majesty of "September," which he presents as the quintessential EWF song. Just watch that scene! It's such a wonderful song, but it's also a captivating film that pays tribute to pop wonder.
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