Soul to Soul

It’s astonishing what passes for “soul music” these days, what with such pathetic attempts as the recent Usher/Alicia Keys duo on the American Music Awards telecast, or the melismatic caterwauling fest that is American Idol. You want honest-to-goodness soul? Check out this 95-minute documentary from 1971, in which Ike & Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, the Voices of East Harlem, Santana and period soul-jazz hipsters Les McCann & Eddie Harris deliver a good, hard dose of American-style soul to a huge crowd (more than 100,000 people) in Accra, Ghana, in West Africa. The live performances— especially Tina Turner, backed by the tumescence-inducing Ikettes—are incendiary, and the interview footage is pretty fascinating, too. A second disc contains a CD recording of the soundtrack.