You're listening to Comedy Central, Welcome to the show. This is great. I love this. There are few people I know who have had more jobs than you and excel at more jobs. I know many people who have had more jobs than you, but for a bad reason. I don't know many people who have had as many jobs as you have and just done well. And I was one of those people though, because at one point I thought there was honor and sort of matching James Brown
and the hardest working man in the show business. Um, once I stop doing everything, than a whole new world of magic open that I never knew of. One of them is what I called storytelling or directing, which this definitely wasn't on my my my bingo card back in two thousand five. But if you look at it, everything I've done to this point is preparing for this moment, this point, because I mean, those forty hours could go the forty hours of the footage that set in the
basement for five decades. I still don't wait. Let's let's just talk about that. I still don't understand this because nobody has seen all of these performances, nobody has seen these moments, nobody has seen what happened in Harlem. In I didn't just start with that. So how did you even begin to find forty hours of footage of it? Would be like it would be like somebody now finding Hey, I found a concert was jay Z and Beyonce and like Michael Jackson and like just like everyone this film.
And I refused to believe it. I get word backstage to the Tonight show that these two gentlemen want to talk to me about these uh so called blackwoodstock and I was like, black woodstock, and well, I'm thinking of woodstock and you're saying there was a black version of that.
And then I was like, well, wait a minute. I'd like to think that I was a music expert or new things, like how come I didn't know that over three hundred thousand people gathered in Harlem for a collective six weekend affair with Stevie Stevie Wonders last Don't bb King maybe Staples, Like how come I didn't know about this? And you know, I was like, call another you had a Blackwoodstocker dinner. I never heard of it, and so I don't understand how that's poassi. I didn't believe it.
I didn't believe that it happened. So the very first meeting, I just thought that these two were trying to just scare me for like tonight show tickets or whatever. That's what I thought it was. And then they came by the next week with a hard drive, and even then I was like, well, the footage must be beat or maybe Stevie had an off day or right, And everything I saw was magic. And to this day that the
reason why even when I agreed to do this. At first, I was just going to compile like seventeen songs, yes, like a mixtape, you know, that sort of thing. But the curiosity kept burning me inside that Like the question I asked is is is black eracer this easy? And that's the thing I think oftentimes, when you know, when we speak up like back Lives Matter or um, you know,
is that racist or not racist? I think people think of the most extreme definition of it, Like in their minds they're saying, well, I've never once hung somebody to across or castrated that we're setting more fire, so I'm not racist. But there's other there's benine levels of racism as well, and even as sort of the sort of the dismissal of like, well we'll pass. You know, we're good. For a lot of people, their first view of us was either in black face or mired in trouble or controversy,
or you know, getting arrested, getting hosed down. And but black joys the component that shows that we're human, you know. And this could have been that moment had it allowed been you know, the spotlight that Woodstock had had gotten. It was also a crucial time as well, you know, some of six. So many things will have in America. You know, a lot was changing in the country. And I remember watching this. I had never seen it. I've
never seen something like this. To your point, a lot of what you see from that time period is a very one dimensional view of black America. So it seems like Black America has only existed in strife for a long time exactly, and only strife, I should mention. And then you watch this and you're like, man, this this is I couldn't believe the scale. I couldn't believe the
party people were happening. I couldn't be having I couldn't believe like who was there and how they were there, who was performing and what it's signified when you when you told that story, what do you think the significance of this event was the significance of the event, at least what I got from it was that this was a community trying to heal. And so for me, shall I say a really beautiful ah, gander into the infinite possibilities of what the future is. You're seeing Stevie under
a mirror two years before his his genius period. You're seeing Nina Simone give one of her very first non jazz, non love song, non Broadway musical performances, like Nina Simone stepping into her activism shoes in real time. So you're seeing all these artists, but really you're also just watching
the people. And that's the thing, like when I say, like we were robbed of that not just as black people put the world to see, you know, oh, families just like mine, just like mine, Happiness just like and that's and that's sort of the that's sort of the missing fiber element and telling our stories from the civil rights period. People don't know. You look at America's story
over and over. It's such a giant country, you know, where if people don't have an interaction with the people on the ground, you don't know a black person, you don't meet a Hispanic person. You don't know. Do you get what I'm saying, don't? I mean, maybe you don't
even That's what I loved about this documentary. I think it's to what you're saying, is it showed a joy, it showed a normality, it showed a there's just a human element that I didn't even know I was looking for, Like because I didn't know that this was going to invoke some sort of emotion out of Merlin mccou and she's watching herself. I'm thinking, like you hosted Solid Gold, Like how do you remember this very specific show back then?
But you know when she started to really open up about code switching and you know, something that every black person relates to on the professional job, and even I needed to see that, like, Wow, even when you're the number one singing group in the world, like you still have to code switch, and you still have to always be on guard, and you're never comfortable, and you know you have longings for just love from your people. You
just want to be accepted. I won't. Like, I think I think you deserve every award that this film has one and is going to win because it's you know, you know what it is. It's it's it's telling a story from history that is lost. It's sharing a joy from history that is that is lost. And I think it's something that people need today where you go like, hey, you know, yeah, we can fight here, we can argue here, we can we can we can deal with what we need to deal with. But at the end of the day,
don't forget joy, because that's what makes us human. So thank you man, thank you for being here, thank you for the documentary. Thank you. I'm not I'm gonna watch it again. I watched the clip and now I'm back. It's currently streaming on Hulu and Disney Plus, and it will make its broadcast television debut February on ABC. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Ears Edition. Subscribe to The Daily Show on YouTube for exclusive content, and stream full
episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast