Congo, Jazz & the CIA: Oscar-Nominated "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat" Revisits Lumumba Assassination

The Oscar-nominated documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat recounts the events leading up to Black American jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach's 1961 protest at the United Nations of the CIA-backed killing of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. The first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lumumba was an icon of the Pan-African and anti-colonial movements. He was tortured and killed shortly after the formation of the first government of independent Congo following a military coup supported by Belgium, the United States and powerful mining interests. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat's Belgian director Johan Grimonprez explains that Lumumba's assassination was the ground zero of how the West was about to deal with the riches of the African continent."