documentaries
So long as there are music fans, there will always be an audience for music documentaries. That’s why several new ones are on the way in 2024, from intriguing deep dives into music history, to behind-the-scenes looks at how music new and old was written, made and performed. And to keep you from missing any […]
At least 15 music docs are among 167 features that are eligible for consideration in the documentary feature film category at the 2024 Oscars. These include films that tell the stories of such varied musicians as Jon Batiste, Carlos Santana, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, Joan Baez, Little Richard, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Thelonious Monk and […]
One of the most multifaceted — and busy — artists working today, Jon Batiste sometimes seems like a superhuman — a seemingly inexhaustible bundle of exuberance, creativity and energy. The New Orleans-bred, Juilliard-trained pianist, singer, songwriter and composer. With his band Stay Human, he spent seven years gaining a huge audience as bandleader on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert; he’s led “love riots” through the streets of New York, playing melodica literally among the city’s inhabitants; he’s won an Oscar and a Golden Globe as co-composer of the score for Pixar’s Soul; and he’s of course won Grammys, five last year alone, including album of the year for his We Are.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
But as the moving new documentary American Symphony shows, Batiste, like so many artists, has a complex private life that his public rarely glimpses. Capturing an especially high-and-low-filled year in Batiste’s life, it interweaves Batiste’s experience as he composes the ambitious titular orchestral work for a Carnegie Hall debut, with the harrowing journey he and his partner, the author-artist Suleika Jaouad, find themselves on when, after a decade in remission, her cancer returns — all shortly before his astounding 11 Grammy nominations arrive.
Directed by Academy Award-winning director Matthew Heineman — who followed Batiste and Jaouad for seven months, filming over 1,500 hours of footage — and coproduced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, American Symphony opens in select U.S. theaters today before arriving on Netflix Nov. 29 (the film features a poignant new song, “It Never Went Away,” which Batiste wrote with Grammy-winner Dan Wilson, out now on Verve Records/Interscope). On Feb. 4, he could potentially make another significant showing at the Grammys, where he has six nominations, before heading out on his Uneasy Tour: Purifying the Airwaves for the People Feb. 16, supporting his latest album World Music Radio.
In the days leading up to his film’s premiere, he spoke to Billboard about opening up his and Jaouad’s lives to Heineman’s cameras, the importance of artists’ mental health, and why at this point he has to “chuckle” at the Grammy chatter around him.
In the film, we see your composing process up close, and it looks much more collaborative than the usual symphony composer’s may be. Is that your typical process? I’m always composing, and it’s not so different actually with a large-form but also longform piece. It was more about thinking about the form, from point A, B, C, D all the way to Z before starting, and then composing into a form that could shift and change depending on what discoveries I made along the way. When I’m writing songs or instrumental music or just a tune, it can happen in the moment, it doesn’t have to happen before I start. [For a symphony] there’s a lot more pre-planning, and then figuring out symbolically with American Symphony how I wanted to use the music as an allegory for certain values, the philosophy that was underpinning it.
If you think about the term classical music — which I love and has probably the biggest influence on my artistry, besides American music and jazz and New Orleans — every composer that comes from that tradition was drawing on the folk musics and traditions they grew up with, the country and time they lived in. The core quest with American Symphony was: if the symphony orchestra and symphonic compositions were to address America today, if they were invented today and I was the inventor, what would I be drawing from, what would I see in my culture and in the American landscape and the milieu I come from? That was really exciting.
Growing up in the generation where streaming music became the norm, electronic music and all the different technological advancements that we’ve come to now see as the norm — all these different approaches to collaboration and music in general that didn’t even exist back when Beethoven was making the seventh symphony or when Duke Ellington was around, but we can still use the lessons of those compositions. Duke, who’s one of my heroes, if he knew a certain musician in the orchestra had a specific approach to playing high notes, or playing ballads, or leading a section, he’d lean into that and compose toward that, and that’s something I always have a voice for. There’s so much you can speak to that many composers before me were speaking to, but I had a unique opportunity here to do a lot.
Creativity and creating art is clearly an important part of your relationship with Suleika, but at the premiere of American Symphony, it almost seems like a real surprise to her. When you’re at work on new music, do you play it for her?
She’ll hear pieces of things and I’ll play things for her typically in fragments, or in a state where the grandeur of what it will be isn’t obvious yet. As you saw in the film there’s a process of it coming to life that can only happen when I’m in the room with the other musicians. So it’s kind of hard to show that to Suleika in full before it happens, it just has to become what it is through a process of constant listening, refinement, composition. A piece like American Symphony is never meant to be completely finished, it’s meant to be a vehicle that evolves over many many years with different folks who can take ownership of all the themes of the piece, and the form and structure. Fifty years from now, if this is played in another part of the world by different musicians, it would be its own unique version.
Jon Batiste in “American Symphony.”
Courtesy of Netflix
We see a lot in the film how you have to constantly navigate between the public face you show the world and what you’re contending with privately, with Suleika’s illness. Especially when the public seems to expect you to be this joyful person at all times, that seems really challenging.
It’s really something that I’ve struggled with for awhile. And I value parts of it as well — the idea of being able to bring folks a sense of uplift-ment in dark times, as a performer, an entertainer, an artist is something I value. But in general it’s been a struggle to navigate the humanity of being all those things. A lot of times I think that’s the case, which is one of the reasons why such an invasive film like this, and the vulnerability required of our family to share what you see, is something we wanted to move forward with. Sometimes pulling the curtain back is an opportunity for us all to tap into our humanity and not only see me in a certain way and realize, “Wow, these are things we all go through.” We can all grow from seeing it and have a deepened respect for this person we admire.
Suleika Jaouad and Jon Batiste in “American Symphony.”
Courtesy of Netflix
You’re incredibly open in the film about therapy, and about the mental health aspect of being an artist on the level you are. What was behind your decision to be open about this?
I hope it’ll be a beacon for a lot of artists. I fear that when people are successful, especially in a public sense, it creates an illusion of ease. I don’t ever want to make anyone feel lesser, or any artist feel like because they’re struggling in this crazy business with their mental state and fortitude that they’re not just like everybody else. Especially folks who are successful, you never know what somebody has given up or decided to do to get to where they are. We’re all just human beings dealing with the same set of things. It’s better if we show it more, rather than hide it away in a curated social media presence.
[embedded content]
Your stunning performance of “Freedom” at the 2022 Grammys is in the film — contextualized with a very clear picture of what you and Suleika were going through at the time, which makes seeing its exuberance especially astounding. Watching it now, what do you see?
It’s tough to watch the film. I don’t have a good barometer because I’ve only seen it a handful of times over the course of the edits. I do have a sense of what the film is like, and living through those moments, the Grammys performance was very much a lot of catharsis, and also a lot of vindication. Just being present in the moment was a difficult thing for me to do given where Suleika was and how much I wanted to be there with her, but also knowing how much she wanted me to be in the moment I was in. So the performance was a great way of zeroing into the moment and, as it always is for me, just channeling and trying to lift the present to a place of transcendence to what we do on the stage. And that moment in particular was more like that than winning the awards we won — it was just a real manifestation of what I do, and what all those artists in there, what I imagine drives them: the performance, not the awards.
Jon Batiste accepts the album of the year award for “We Are” onstage during tat the 64th Annual Grammy Awards held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on April 3rd, 2022 in Las Vegas.
Christopher Polk for Variety
We hear in voiceover some of the detractors who were rather loud in the wake of your big Grammy wins. How aware were you of that narrative in the moment, and how did you approach including it in the film, which I assume wasn’t easy?
I’m at a point, to be frank, that I don’t really care. These are things I’ve gotten used to in terms of creating music and doing things that are speaking to the culture, doing things that are counterculture, things that are perceived to be one way when they’re completely the opposite of that. I’ve been perceived to be an institutionalist, and to be not institutional enough. To be a person who is too sophisticated, and to be someone who is dumbing down what they do too much. To be a person who is a part of a fix in the system, someone who comes out of nowhere, and also as the industry darling or the vet or the favored one, who’s constantly had privileges. What that tells me overall, since I’ve been doing this from the age of 15 in New Orleans, is just that I have longevity and I have impact.
Even the fact of the symphony upon its performance at Carnegie Hall — which I unabashedly will say was a cultural moment, if not just for New York then for our country, for music — for there to be no critical review or discussion that was remotely intelligent discourse, with so many firsts [achieved with it that] I’ve lost count? I’m just so used to it. Twenty years in, you just kind of chuckle about it. Eventually, maybe, people will catch on, but I don’t really do it for that. Ultimately it’s just a matter of doing what I’m doing and doing what I love.
Taylor Swift must be accustomed by now to setting records on the Billboard charts. That never gets to be old hat – ask any artist – but she needs new worlds to conquer. And with the release of Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour concert film on Oct. 13, we can see how she does […]
Over the last two decades, documentaries about the late Tupac Shakur have become a cottage industry of sorts. The best of them — like Lauren Lazin’s Tupac: Resurrection, which largely draws from the artist’s own words, or Peter Spirer’s Thug Angel, which covers Tupac’s early life and his mother’s impact on him — have used insightful interviews and probing analysis to shed light on one of the most influential yet misunderstood music artists of the 20th century. Others, like A&E’s Who Killed Tupac? series or countless homemade YouTube productions, felt more like salacious true crime, less interested in Tupac the generationally gifted (if flawed) man, than in a gunned-down rap star caught amid the East Coast-West Coast feud of the ‘90s, dead at 25 after a Las Vegas shooting.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Allen Hughes’ Dear Mama, a long-gestating five-part series beginning on FX April 21, is unlike any of the myriad Tupac docs before. Filled with rare footage, previously unheard vocal takes and significant interviews with those in Tupac’s close orbit — from family members to early managers to peers like Snoop Dogg — it presents a fully-realized portrait of both the musician and the man, while devoting equal screen time to the life of his mother, Afeni Shakur, who oversaw Tupac’s estate until her death in 2016. A singularly complex woman, Afeni was a member of the Black Panther party and part of the Panther 21, a group of activists who were tried and ultimately acquitted in a high-profile trial between 1970 and 1971, where Afeni both defended herself and cross-examined witnesses.
Tupac Shakur in ‘DEAR MAMA.’
FX
“There have been a million pieces done on him, but none of them really did the trick as far as understanding completely that narrative and that human being and the complexities and the dualities,” Hughes tells Billboard. “You talk about the surface stuff, but there was never a deep dive. I wanted to understand.”
Dear Mama comes at a time when Tupac remains a massively important figure in both hip-hop and popular culture at large. Since Snoop Dogg acquired Death Row Records, the legendary rap label’s discography has returned to streaming services — helping ensure that Tupac’s still-fresh, urgent music will be heard widely 30 years after its release. (Music executive Tom Whalley, who signed Tupac to Interscope Records and was a close friend of his, is the current trustee of the Shakur Estate; Shakur’s sister Sekyiwa is currently engaged in ongoing litigation with Whalley).
Music documentaries can easily fall into a number of traps — veering into hagiography, relying on the same handful of oft-quoted interview subjects, or zooming too far and coming across like a Wikipedia entry. Some directors have evaded those traps by honing in on a specific era of their subject’s life or career, as Alan Elliott and Sydney Pollack did with Aretha Franklin in Amazing Grace, or Peter Jackson managed in his Beatles series Get Back. Hughes had another idea: as he saw it, Afeni was not only a remarkable figure in her own right, but the key to doing her son’s story justice. “I said, ‘I’m down to do it, but I’d like to make it a five-part series, and the narrative would be as much about his mother as it is about him,’” Hughes explains.
Afeni Shakur in ‘DEAR MAMA.’
FX
Working with his twin brother, Albert, as the Hughes Brothers, Allen, 51, rose to prominence directing hit films like Menace II Society and The Book of Eli, as well as the controversial feature documentary American Pimp. He entered the documentary world solo with 2017’s The Defiant Ones, an acclaimed four-part look at the relationship between Interscope Records founder Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. Whalley reached out to Hughes — who had worked with Tupac during his lifetime, notably on 1991’s brilliant “Brenda’s Got a Baby” video — following the success of that HBO series.
He was hesitant. Back in 1994, Tupac was set to play a starring role in Menace II Society, but an on-set argument with him and Hughes escalated into a physical fight between the two men, and associates of the artist beat the director. Tupac left the cast, and their relationship fractured. “When I sat with [the estate], I was reluctant to do [the documentary] because of my own personal reasons. I just didn’t know if I wanted to [deal with] what I was gonna be forced to, personally,” Hughes recalls. “I didn’t know if I wanted to go on that emotional journey, but I said, ‘Give me a few days, let me think about it.’” Ultimately, he decided not only to move forward, but to confront the incident head-on in Dear Mama — turning the camera on himself at the end of the second episode, and being interviewed about what transpired.
“He was young, Tupac was young, and if they both had to do it over again, they would have done things differently,” says Atron Gregory, a friend and former manager of Tupac’s who participated in Dear Mama. Gregory says he was initially surprised to hear Hughes would be directing, but upon reflection he realized that he was well-suited to take on the project.
Nick Grad, president of FX Entertainment, says he saw Hughes’ approach as a way to continue to build out the network’s burgeoning documentary branch, which includes Hip Hop Uncovered (about America’s criminalization of rap music) and a collaborative series with the New York Times, which recently included an episode about legendary producer J Dilla. But Grad says he more broadly saw Dear Mama as a perfect fit within FX’s wider slate of innovative projects.
“We decided if we’re going to get into documentary, we have to approach it using the same criteria that we do with our scripted shows,” he says. “How original can it be? Is this something that people are still hopefully going to be talking about in 10 years, in 20 years?”
Early episodes focus heavily on Afeni’s involvement with the Black Panthers in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and how that affected young Tupac’s life. (Afeni was famously pregnant with Tupac while in prison.) Hughes explores similarities in mother and son’s temperaments — and the ways that malicious men within the Black liberation movement took advantage of them, while the U.S. government was simultaneously attempting to dismantle and punish anyone attempting to disrupt the status quo. “Early in episode one, [Tupac’s aunt] Glo talks about Afeni, saying she was a wonderer and a wanderer, [and] not aimlessly,” Hughes says. “Everyone describes Afeni and Tupac as twins.” As the series progresses, its focus shifts to how Tupac struggled to reconcile his activist ambitions with his celebrity, and the mental toll that took.
Afeni Shakur in ‘DEAR MAMA.’
FX
Though Dear Mama is comprehensive, Hughes says he is not trying to offer definitive moral conclusions. That meant handling the legal trouble in Tupac’s life by focusing on accounts from those who were there — an approach that leads to some of the series’ most powerful moments, like the vivid description (down to a recreation of the shooter’s stance) of Tupac shooting two off-duty cops, one of whom he’d seen hit a Black man, on Halloween 1993 in Atlanta. It also leaves some events more uncomfortably murky, like the 1994 New York case in which Tupac was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse, but ultimately acquitted of sodomy charges, following an incident with a young woman and some of his associates at the Parker Meridien hotel (Tupac spent several months in an upstate New York prison and at Riker’s Island, though he maintained his innocence). In Dear Mama, his aunt Glo says that Afeni “felt sympathy for the woman, but she never doubted that Tupac was innocent.”
“For all the alleged crimes he was caught up in or were litigated, if you weren’t a friend or family that was there, I’m not relitigating,” Hughes says of his approach. “It’s only through the eyes of people who were there or close to him and how it dovetails back into the dynamic with his mother. It’s not a normal documentary in the way of ‘Let’s go explore.’”
Tupac Shakur in ‘DEAR MAMA.’
FX
Dear Mama largely eschews hitting the well-trod beats in Tupac’s life. “I think that there was so much energy put on West Coast, East Coast, feuding, when Tupac went to jail in New York, and then when he [signed] with Death Row,” Gregory says. “‘California Love’ was so huge, and [his 1996 album] All Eyez on Me was so huge. I think people forget the first five years of his career. “ Hughes spends considerable time on Tupac’s adolescent days at the Baltimore School for the Arts; his time with early managers Gregory and Leila Steinberg; and his formative time spent on the road with the joyous Bay Area rap collective Digital Underground. That commitment to covering the often-glossed-over aspects of the artist’s life — in particular his relationship with Digital Underground — was a major reason Gregory agreed to participate.
When the series does explore Tupac’s signing with Death Row, interviews with Gregory and Black Panther-turned-manager Watani Tyehimba stress that Tupac was aiming to make positive changes in his life post-prison before Suge Knight became involved with the label. (With the support of Interscope, Knight famously helped bail a broke Tupac out of prison, on the condition that he sign a contract with the infamous label). At the time, members of Tupac’s inner circle were uncomfortable with the decision and the influence Death Row could have on him.
“He was happy, excited. He had money and he was free. But sometimes, progression is a digression, because the environment was bad for him,” says Snoop Dogg — a then-Death Row artist who advocated for the label signing Tupac — in Dear Mama.
Interviews in the doc also highlight the inner turmoil the artist himself experienced. The height of Tupac’s success came at a time when rap was vilified by politicians and the press, and Hughes shows the artist debating members of the media about whether he is a gangsta rapper himself. Clips like these of Tupac himself are revealing, none more so than when the artist talks about his dynamic with Afeni. “Do your mother’s feelings ever get hurt when you talk about how painful and sad you were as a kid?” an interviewer asks. “I always used to feel like she cared more about the people, than her people,” Tupac answers. “But I love her for that — that’s how I am.”
In the end, Hughes says, crafting Dear Mama made him reconsider his own relationship with his mother, who was a passionate activist in the ERA movement, and both challenged and shattered some of his own preconceptions about Tupac. “I thought I knew why he was paranoid because I knew the guy at 19 — you know, young Black male shit. Hennessy, weed, typical stuff, experiencing fame,” Hughes reflects. “What I didn’t understand was that at five, eight years old, the expectation [was] that sometimes he had assignments to sit on a stoop in Harlem and watch out for federal agents all day.
“Can you imagine: with the FBI’s COINTELPRO surveillance program, [which targeted] the Black Panthers and other Black organizations, you’re systematically seeing all of your fathers and mothers and aunts and uncles either killed or put in prison or ran out to some other goddamn country?” Hughes continues. “And you’re always being surveilled, you’re always being dogged by the FBI. Who wouldn’t be paranoid?”
Hughes speaks frequently about finding the “melody” in Tupac and Afeni’s life and letting the story flow from there — and cites a bit of wisdom given to him by a legendary collaborator that ultimately helped him shape Dear Mama into the rarest kind of Tupac project: something genuinely revelatory.
“Denzel Washington taught me something on The Book of Eli,” he says. “I [was] young, I’m trying to do it all. He says, ‘Listen, the universal stems from the specific.’ And it changed my life.”
The 2023 Tribeca Festival announced its lineup for this year’s event on Tuesday (April 18) and among the 109 feature films from 127 directors from 36 countries are a number of documentaries about some of the most beloved, scandalous and intriguing musicians of the modern era.
The Festival, which takes place from June 7-18, will spotlight 93 world premieres and a diverse roster featuring 43 first-time directors with 41% of all feature films directed by women and, in a first, more than half of competition films directed by women (68%), as well as 36% of feature films directed by BIPOC filmmakers.
Among the notable music-related movies are:
Uncharted — (world premiere) Director Beth Aala goes behind the scenes of Alicia Keys’ “She Is the Music” songwriting camp, with a performance from She Is the Music artists afterwards curated by Keys.
Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story — (world premiere) After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, GB leader Eugene Hütz breaks down the influence of Ukrainian and Roma culture on his punk band’s music, followed by a performance by the band.
Milli Vanilli — (world premiere) Director Luke Korem’s deep dive into the origin and precipitous downfall of the “Girl You Know It’s True” duo featuring a rare interview with surviving member Fabrice Morvan. (This writer was interviewed for the film.)
Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive — (world premiere) A documentary chronicling the “I Will Survive” singer’s comeback with a new gospel album, touching on her struggles with ageism and financial ruin, followed by a live performance.
All Up in the Biz — (world premiere) Director Sacha Jenkins collages celebrity interviews, rare film, reenactments and animation to describe how late rap icon Biz Markie left his mark on the music world.
It’s Only Life After All — (New York premiere) A look at the beloved folk duo, with a songwriting masterclass to follow.
Songs About F–king — (world premiere) Musician Marc Rebillet goes on one of the first live music tours after the COVID-19 lockdown, with musical Q&A with Rebillet afterwards.
Waitress, the Musical – Live on Broadway! — (world premiere) A movie treatment of the Broadway musical about a small-town pie baker with big dreams featuring lyricist Sara Bareilles, who will perform live after the screening.
Cypher — (world premiere) Director Chris Mourkabel “captures the weird and sinister side of fame” in a pseudo-documentary about rapper Tierra Whack.
Bad Like Brooklyn Dancehall — (world premiere) Doc about the city’s role in the evolution of dancehall, featuring Shaggy and Sean Paul, followed by performance from dancehall legends.
Maestra — (world premiere) Director Maggie Contreras follows women from different backgrounds as they compete in the first all-women competition for conducting.
In addition to those music features, the festival will host the “Escape From Tribeca” series featuring films such as Enter the Clones of Bruce, a doc looking at the Bruce Lee exploitation craze, director Sav Rodgers’ Chasing Chasing Amy about the filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery while making a doc on the development of Kevin Smith’s controversial LGBTQ+ film Chasing Amy and Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music, a concert film that dives into New York theater legends Mac’s “ostentatiously queer 24-hour musical performance.”
There will also be a world premiere of the life of late Marvel Comics genius Stan Lee, a profile of legendary MLB promoter and owner Bill Veeck (The Saint of Second Chances) touching on his famous 1979 “Disco Demolition” stunt at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, a profile of New York concert promoter Ron Delsener (Ron Delsener Presents) and the world premiere of Anthem, in which DJ Dahi and composer Kris Bowers set off on a road trip across the country to find out what it sounds like to have a national anthem that actually reflects America.
For a full list of this year’s films click here.
Selena Gomez introduced the world to the complexities of her mind and mental health through her new, aptly titled AppleTV+ documentary, My Mind & Me, which held its premiere at AFI Festival in Los Angeles, Calif., on Wednesday night (Nov. 2).
“I was going to release this documentary multiple times and it never really felt right,” the star told Billboard on the red carpet at the event. “Then the pandemic hit and a lot of people started having conversations around mental health, the isolation, people feeling depressed or anxious — never feeling those feelings before but have now. I just hope that this will carry on to something like a conversation that people will use to help later on.”
The theme of connection and starting a conversation rang true throughout the film, as Gomez sought healing from her bipolar disorder and lupus diagnoses as well as her 2017 kidney transplant through spending time with others — whether that be her best friend Raquelle Stevens, her childhood neighbors in Grand Prairie, Texas, or the children of Kenya during a 2019 philanthropic visit.
The Alek Keshishian-helmed film is a raw look at mental health, pulling back the curtain of fame to reveal a young woman who is actively working on her complicated relationship with loving and accepting herself. It’s rare to see a high-profile star show the more uncomfortable versions of herself to a global audience, allowing a camera crew to film her as she cries over her insecurities, undergoes a medical IV therapy for lupus and speaks at length about what it’s like to have a psychological disorder.
At one point in the documentary, Gomez likens learning about her bipolar disorder to reading about thunder and lightning as a child to help subside her fear of storms — which is a lesson she told Billboard she still uses to this day. “Knowledge eliminates fear in my opinion, because then you start having a relationship with your mental health, so I would suggest to learn as much as you can,” she shared as her advice to those going through similar struggles that she has gone through.
At an onstage Q&A following the premiere, Gomez elaborated on that same thought. “It’s OK to feel not good enough and to feel like you’re complicated and complex. It’s just about having a healthy relationship with how you talk to yourself, how you seek help, how you talk to other people,” she said of what she hopes people will take from the film. “I hope this starts a chain reaction of people saying, ‘Hey, I want to say something about my mental health. I want to talk about it and seek help.’ That’s one of the bravest things someone can do. Even if just one person is impacted by this film, I would consider myself the luckiest girl.”
Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me is out on Apple TV+ starting Friday (Nov. 4).
-
Pages