Parental Advisory: Bill Withers
Check for updates on what your parent’s favorite musicians are doing in our weekly Parental Advisory post. This week’s soul pioneer still making a stamp on music: Bill Withers.
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Video: Still Bill, The Bill Withers Documentary
It’s been almost 25 years since Bill Withers packed up his bags and turned his back on the music industry, a silent step back into obscurity that’s still flanked with baffling question marks. Documentary filmmakers Helmers Damani Baker and Alex Vlack went in search of Withers eight years ago, and managed to capture 300 hours of footage with the musician over the course of two years, peeling back the veil on the familial privacy he’s kept in a Los Angeles hillside hideaway. As well as journeying back to the coal-mining town in West Virginia where Withers grew up, the movie uncovers his dissatisfaction with the business, and finds him slowly piecing together the will to make music again. Still Bill has picked up a bunch of awards on the film festival circuit and screens at the IFC in New York this week, and you can also pre-order the DVD here. -Chioma Nnadi
We Got to Have It: “Soul Power”
As James Brown famously sang, “That’s what it’s all about, soul power.” Soul Power, a new documentary on an amazing three-night concert series held in Kinshasa, Zaire in 1974 featuring the most famous American R&B acts of the era, demonstrates the enduring, transcendent power of soul. Held in conjunction with Mohammed Ali and George Foreman’s “Rumble in the Jungle” and briefly discussed in the documentary When We Were Kings, Zaire ’74 (as the festival was called) showcased an abundance of soul power from James Brown, Celia Cruz, BB King, and Bill Withers, among others. Reconnecting with their African roots and the enthusiastic crowd, these performers gave the concert of their lives. After spending years in a vault, the film is now being released, and opens tonight in New York and Los Angeles. View the trailer below, and don’t miss it. —Gracie Remington
