On August 20, 1972-the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots-a 7 hour concert of various musical acts from the Stax Records roster was held at the Los Angeles Coliseum in honor of that event. Among those artists put in the film include: The Stax Golden 13 warbling "Old Time Religion", The Staple Singers chanting "Respect Yourself", Kim Weston performing "Lift Every Voice and Sing", The Bar-Kays doing "Son of Shaft", Albert King singing "I'll Sing the Blues for You", Carla Thomas warbling "Picking Up the Pieces", Rufus Thomas performing "The Breakdown" and "Do the Funky Chicken", Luthur Ingram wailing "If Loving You is Wrong, I Don't Want to be Right", and Isaac Hayes doing-of course-"Theme From Shaft". In addition, three young women called The Emotions perform in a church with "Peace Be Still". All are surrounded by Richard Pryor doing some hilarious monologues about growing up black as well as many Watts residents-one of which I recognized as Ted Lange, later Isaac on "The Love Boat"-also talking about pretty much the same thing. Director Mel Stuart also provides lots of documentary footage of the area as it was at the time and during the events this film addresses. The performances I saw were great and I was especially glad to see the Hayes sequence since it wasn't in the airing on Cinemax in the '90s when I first watched this. The version I saw just now was on YouTube with the first 49 minutes from a French broadcast and the other an Asian one though it cut off after Luther Ingram in the middle of Pryor's next segment so I had to look elsewhere on the YouTube site for Richard's remaining monologues and Hayes' restored performance (I've yet to see his other number "Soulsville"). Nonetheless, this was a great documentary with excellent musical performances all around. So on that note, Wattstax is well worth seeing. P.S. Both The Emotions and The Staple Singers were native to my birthtown of Chicago, Ill. Luther Ingram was the co-writer-with Mack Rice-of the Staples' "Respect Yourself". It happened to be Hayes' 30th birthday when he performed at this event. And I also noticed Ossie Davis and wife Ruby Dee among the audience members. Update: 6/8/13-I've now seen Hayes' "Soulsville" performance and it's a nice serious number about the struggles of his people living below their means with pertinent footage accompanying it.

I find the comparisons of 'Wattstax' with 'Woodstock' a little exaggerated on any dimension. As a musical event the five hours concert on the Olympic Stadium in LA was shorter, and less representative even of the the whole scene of black music of the time, while Woodstock was the big music event of a generation and gathered much of the cream of the rock music. From a social perspective while Woodstock was THE event of the hippie era to be talked about 40 years later, Wattstack got lost in a period rich of events that took the Afro-American society from segregation to equal political rights.

This does not mean that this documentary is a bad film, quite the opposite. The model of the Woodstock documentary is pretty well learned and followed, and we do feel the atmosphere of the day. The shots from the life in the black neighborhood of America are well chosen, and give documentary value to the movie. Pryor's monologues are fun, kind of a stand-up show avant-la-lettre, best in dealing with the realities of life in black America from a humorist perspective. Some of the other interviews seem a little artificial, part of the guys talk like Jesse Lackson the politician, while Jesse Jackson himself looks more natural as he had not become a politician yet.

Music is of course supposed to be the big prize of such a film. I felt somehow disappointed not only because of the too many missing names who could have joined such a show, but also because the concert does not seem to have been in the focus of Mel Stuart when he made the film, he lets us guess too many times who are the singers or maybe relies on a familiarity with the faces that went lost in 35 years, and some songs are cut in the middle for some more spoken words. Music could have made a better case even on the social issues if it was let to have more of its saying.

Wattstax is a concert film, based on the performance of the same name which was held in the summer of 1972. Held in the Los Angeles Coliseum (then home to the NFL's Rams team),the concert was the climax of what was then an annual week-long festival held in the African-American community of Watts commemorating the rebellion/riots that took place in 1965. All of the music performers involved were from the now-storied Stax label, which gave the American pop landscape such acts as Sam & Dave, Booker T. & the MGs, and the Otis Redding. A diverse selection of performers gives viewers a near-complete glimpse of the black music experience circa 1972: Gospel, blues, R&B, and funk artists all on the same bill. Promoted as "The black Woodstock", the full concert was six hours, here condensed to roughly 90 minutes.

The concert was hosted by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who speaks his now-legendary "I Am Somebody" sermon. Highlights of the show include the Staple Singers ("Respect Yourself"),The Bar-Kays ("Son of Shaft"),Johnnie Taylor ("Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone") Albert King ("I'll Play the Blues for You"),and Rufus Thomas ("The Funky Chicken"). "Shaft" composer and future "South Park" icon Isaac Hayes got to close the show, and the DVD restores his full performance (Warner Bros. Pictures controlled the copyright to the "Shaft" movie songs and refused clearance for the film, which was originally released through Columbia Pictures; the original movie footage of Hayes was rather brief, which perhaps damaged its box office run).

Interspersed between the concert footage are man-on-the-street interviews with assorted locals, who get to opine without censorship on various issues of the day. A pre-"Love Boat" Ted Lange is among them (his prematurely graying mustache lending unintentional humor to his young-guy rants). Also bookending many segments is Richard Pryor, whose similarly uncensored dialogue make some affecting points about uncomfortable subjects, from slavery to police brutality to unemployment. That he manages to find humor in the brutality of racism speaks to the genius of the late comic.

Wattstax, released in the midst of the "blaxploitation" movie trend, was a then-unheard of snapshot of the state of black America as buffered through the music of its artists. There are many establishing shots of storefronts in black neighborhoods: ramshackle churches abound, as well as other starkly blighted structures. As one resident puts it, "some things have changed for the better… some for the worst… a lot of things have stayed the same.." Whatever the physical costs of the civil rights movement (there is brief footage included of Dr. Martin Luther King's final speech) the emotional wounds were still fresh. "Black is beautiful" was the catchphrase of the day, and Afrocentric styles of hair and fashion were at a pre-disco peak (however the flamboyant 'players' who come to see a nightclub show anticipate the "me decade" excess that was to come). Based on footage shown, the assembly team who put together the stage in the middle of the field is mostly white; however, according to commentator Rob Bowman, Stax boss Al Bell insisted that the private security be black as well as any LAPD involved.