Horace Tapscott Musical Griot at International House Philadelphia

Winner of Best Feature Documentary Audience Award at the Pan African Film Festival, Horace Tapscott Musical Griot is an insightful testament to the importance of Black music, art, and activism to the history of Los Angeles. Horace Tapscott (1934-99), an important and underappreciated jazz musician as well as community activist, was blacklisted in the 1960s due to his political affiliations, which led the LAPD to shut down his performances during the Watts Rebellion of 1965. The film shares Tapscott’s story in the manner of a griot, or West African storyteller who maintains the oral history of a culture....

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Winner of Best Feature Documentary Audience Award at the Pan African Film Festival, Horace Tapscott Musical Griot is an insightful testament to the importance of Black music, art, and activism to the history of Los Angeles. Horace Tapscott (1934-99), an important and underappreciated jazz musician as well as community activist, was blacklisted in the 1960s due to his political affiliations, which led the LAPD to shut down his performances during the Watts Rebellion of 1965. The film shares Tapscott’s story in the manner of a griot, or West African storyteller who maintains the oral history of a culture.

Director Barbara McCullough, USA, 2017, Running Time 72 minutes. With filmmaker Barbara McCullough in person

Preceded by:
John Coltrane Place: Giant Steps of Philadelphia
by The John Coltrane House Film Committee and Scribe Video Center, 2016, 10 min.
Coltrane laid the foundation for his revolutionary musical approach while he lived in Philadelphia. The film explores the current community’s attempts to make his former home a cultural mecca for jazz aficionados around the world.


A native of New Orleans, Barbara McCullough is a part of the L.A. Rebellion, the movement of Black independent filmmakers and has spent most of her life in the Los Angeles area. Her film and video projects include: Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflection on Ritual Space, Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification, and The World Saxophone Quartet. Her works have been screened in museums and galleries nationally and internationally. McCullough has also served as Chair and Professor of visual effects at the Savannah College of Art and Design.


This screening is co-sponsored by The Philadelphia Jazz Project and the University of Pennsylvania Cinema & Media Studies Program

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