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"'Can You Dig It?' is as definitive as it gets, and treats its subject seriously, lovingly and with an attention to detail that makes it a necessary purchase. An exemplary collection (with really fantastic stills photos) that is near perfect.' WIRE MAGAZINE
‘Can You Dig It?’ charts the rise of ‘Black Action Films’ from 1970-75. As well as featuring a double-CD collection of the stunning music from these films, ‘Can You Dig It?’ comes with a 100-page booklet, limited-edition mini-film poster cards and stickers. The vinyl is on two monster loud separate double albums.
The Black Action Films of the early 1970s gave the Hollywood industry its first African-American cinema – actors, directors, cameramen, editors and writers. These films discussed aspects of the African-American experience in the form of entertainment. Storylines interwove post-civil rights revolution with action stories, many involving pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers or private detectives.
The films also featured the finest funk and soul black music of the time as stars such as James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Willie Hutch and Roy Ayers produced some of their finest work, with film budgets allowing for the addition of huge orchestral arrangements by jazz legends such as Quincy Jones, Johnny Pate and JJ Johnson.
In the early 1970s, Black Action Films exploded into the cinema with three extremely successful films – ‘Shaft’, ‘Super Fly’ and ‘Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song’. The most profound statement of these films was their actual existence – black actors and black directors entering the previously closed Hollywood film industry.
Black Action Films were a representation of politically everything that had gone before and stylistically of everything that was current. Civil rights, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Black Power, Black Panthers, Vietnam sit alongside the criminal worlds of policemen, private investigators, bail bondsmen and the criminals, drug dealers, pimps and hustlers that they parole.
‘Can U Dig It?’ brings you everything you always wanted to know about black action films. Aside from the amazing music (brought together for the first time ever), it also comes with a 100-page (yes, 100-page!) book featuring scores of original photographs, film posters, text and descriptions of all the films. |
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