Since that time in his teens when he self-published the early ’90s graffiti art zine “Graphic Scenes & X-Plicit Language,”has been about documenting hip-hop and funk culture — Black culture. Moving between print , television and film , he’s documented the intricacies of African-American culture with dexterity and painstaking study .a fitting story for the director-writer-producer to tell.
Louis was a man of his times. Consider what and where he came from and what he had to face. What was he up against? What kind of special person would he have to be to overcome all that he went through to become who he became? This guy, then, is not who we thought he was. The hip-hop people of my generation, even Wynton Marsalis who we interviewed — he was into Louis and it was his dad who turned him onto Armstrong’s trumpet playing.
I used to be a music journalist. I can give you a whole lot of musicology. But. I believe that if you don’t understand the man, how are you going to understand the music? What’s germane to understanding Black music in America is understanding Black people. You can be a white jazz scholar who knows more about jazz than me and tell me that my film missed the mark, but I’ll tell you that white people don’t know what it is to be Black.
Look, Louis Armstrong is a great American who, as an American, made contributions to the world. But at the end of the day, he was a Black man, and the filmmaker that you speak of – I don’t know his race – but, I can tell you as a Black man and as a Black American what I thought was most important was having that conversation amongst us. This film is for everyone, but there are very specific internal conversations that are being had specifically for Black people.