Think Video: South Dallas Pop
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In this Scene segment from Think, Krys Boyd talks to Roger Boykin, who, with Wendell Sneed, created the South Dallas Pop Festival in the early '70s. Think airs Friday nights at 7:30 on KERA (Channel 13) and repeats Sunday at 11:30 a.m. and Wednesday at 1:30 a.m. And check out the Art&Seek blog on Monday for posts from our South Dallas Pop party at the South Dallas Cultural Center Friday night!
Note: This post has been modified because the video it contains was misidentified. We will soon post the video of Krys Boyd's interview with Nancy Nasher and Jed Morse of the Nasher Sculpture Center, which is celebrating its anniversary this weekend with these special events. Our apologies for any confusion.
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This post has 2 comments
I just viewed the "Art and Seek" regarding the 1970 South Dallas Funk Festival, and I am in shock that KERA dedicated only a 30 minute sound bite to such an historical event . There were no live performances shown. No information was given about the bands either or possibly any famous people that attended. Surely the Dallas News has some archives or any of the local Black publications.The two gentlemen Wendell Sneed and Roger Boykin had already been cheated 40 years ago out of the respect they deserved as great musicians, and were cheated again by KERA. There was enough valuable material that could have been a week long series. My family and freinds were calling each other on the phone with excitment beliving this to be a great informative as well as entertaining night, and were left hanging.
It was one of the producers' great regrets that there was no live footage shown in 'South Dallas Pop" because no live footage has ever been found. Believe me, if they had found some, they would have used it. One of the fundamental challenges they faced was trying to capture some of the spirit of that time and place and those performers without any live record available.
As for your other suggestions: Having worked at the Dallas Morning News for 20 years, I can assure you that large parts of its library, especially the photo archives from before the '80s, were simply trashed during a major re-structuring in the early '80s. As the paper's theater critic for 10 years, I often could not find a single record of significant stage productions from the '60s, '70s or '80s– and this was for mainstream, long-established companies like the Dallas Theater Center, the Shakespeare Festival or Theatre 3. You could pretty much forget about finding anything in those years for the smaller, more adventuresome companies or anything in the African-American commmunity. If they existed once upon a time, they no longer did.
So the hope that a one-shot event in South Dallas in the early '70s would have any extensive archival record at the News is pretty slim. So the sad fact is that the producers did everything they could. The happy fact is that KERA was able to present this little taste, this memento of the moment.
Over the past four months, since the first broadcast of 'South Dallas Pop,' other items on this site written about the show (or shamelessly touting it) include:
The Critics Say: "Watch South Dallas Pop." And Then You May Dance.
I Love Wendell Sneed
Get Funky with "South Dallas Pop"
But if you'd like to buy an audio record of the festival, you can go here: http://www.amazon.com/Live-South-Dallas-Festival-1970/dp/B00009Y3RB/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1233858774&sr=1-2