At Sundance, documentaries resurrect lost eras of music

By JAKE COYLE
AP Film Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Buzz always emanates at the Sundance Film Festival from its music documentaries. At last year’s virtual festival, Questlove’s “Summer of Soul (or … The Revolution Will Not Be Televised),” which documented the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, was arguably the festival’s biggest breakout hit. This year’s Sundance, which is also happening virtually and runs through Sunday, abounds in music docs. Among this year’s crop is the first film of a three-part Netflix documentary on Ye (formerly Kanye West), “jeen-yuhs,” and the Sinéad O’Connor doc “Nothing Compares.” The films differ widely in subject and style but they each resurrect a musical past that feels very distant from our present.