Thunder Soul Review

Movie Review:
Thunder Soul

I enjoyed this movie immensely, and it provided me inspiration as to what music can do for us as teenagers and adults alike.  Thunder Soul relates the events surrounding the reunion in 2008 of stageband members from Kashmere High-school, an inner-city predominantly black school in Houston, Texas.  The band members had performed together 35 years earlier as students in the mid-1970s under the leadership of director Conrad “Prof” Johnson, who turned the ensemble into a powerhouse of funk music that rivaled professional bands performing at the highest level.  The movie also artfully intertwines the story of Johnson, who had the skills in his early twenties to pursue a professional career as a jazz saxophonist, and instead followed a different path as a high-school band teacher.   The themes presented relate directly to the issues we are dealing with in the Secondary Methods class: What does it mean to teach music to students?  What are our goals as music teachers?  What exactly is it that we want our students to know?  How do we as teachers relate to our students, to our administrators, to our community at large?  These are just a few of the questions we are mulling over that I found weaving in and out of the events presented in Thunder Soul (the title comes from the name the students gave their band).  Conrad Johnson gave his own insight to these questions during interviews presented in the movie:  “My whole desire is to train and shape the mind of each individual I come in contact with from the standpoint of teaching them . . . When they first come to me, regardless as to what kind of tone they have, I work to develop that tone, and that’s the first step: learn to play the instrument, then the music.”

I recommend this movie highly; I believe it to be quite motivational, instructional, and insightful for teachers and students alike.  I know I’ll be showing it to my students at some point before the end of the year.  Here is a link to this movie’s trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-bSBqgJbTQ and here is another youtube link to a tune called Scorpio that the band recorded in the 70s so you can get an idea of their awesome sound: www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3sEW9-RVh8