CBC Arts49%
This new Earth, Wind & Fire documentary isn’t just playing the hits 29%
By Nathan Chizen0%
6/9/2026, 1:00:53 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Halo Effect, Biased Writer Voice, and Self-Serving Bias, with Confirmation Bias as the most egregious example at 20.5% saturation with 161 hits. Analysis detected 1,665 faulty-reasoning hits from 787 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 39% and a BS Rank of 29% (15,745 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 71.90% of the article peer group.
There’s a new Earth, Wind & Fire documentary streaming now.
Titled Earth, Wind & Fire: To Be Celestial vs That’s the Weight of the World, it charts the genre-bending groups’ origins and their cultural impact, all under the leadership of band leader Maurice White.
Helmed by drummer and documentary filmmaker Questlove, it's also a display of The Roots musician’s ever-increasing prowess as director and music historian, opting for a subject-led film that often brings audiences to unexpected places within the band’s history.
Today on Commotion, culture critic Jay Smooth joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about the new film, and how it goes beyond the surface of hits like September to somewhere more meaningful.
We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity.
For the full discussion, which also covers the new Netflix docu-series Michael Jackson: The Verdict, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:
Elamin: There are people who maybe only know them through hits like September.
But where do Earth, Wind & Fire sit in the pantheon of successful live bands?
Jay: I think that's what makes this documentary so cool — they're always going to be known for those hits like September and Shining Star — [is it] really shows you how much deeper their cultural impact was, especially for people my age growing up in the ’70s and ’80s.
They had this whole body of work with all these innovative jazz elements and horn arrangements, and connections to our African roots and uplifting messages.
I'm probably part of a generation of kids who grew up with this African instrument in our house, the kalimba — also known as the thumb piano — because of how Maurice White and Earth, Wind & Fire introduced us to [it] and all this culture.
[They] really captured our imagination with their presentation on record and on stage.
And I think the documentary does a great job of showing how deep that legacy goes.
Elamin: When you see them on stage, there's something about the spectacle that makes you go, “Oh, they're creating a world, and I want to be a part of that.”
What do you think sets Earth, Wind & Fire apart from other bands?
Jay: I think Maurice White had this really particular vision of connecting his audience to the past and African roots.
He also had this futuristic vision that you could see even on the album covers back then.
It was a mix of ancient [Egyptian] and futuristic space technology.
And he captured that really well over the years on the stage show, and kept making it more elaborate where eventually band members would be floating in the air as they played their solos.
It was just a beautiful lore and mythology we could connect to.
Elamin: This new documentary is directed by Questlove of The Roots.
What do you think of his approach to telling their story in this documentary?
Jay: We've seen a number of documentary works from Questlove and his team, and I think this is the most polished, fully realized one [yet], where he does something difficult.
If you're making a documentary that's driven entirely by the interview subjects — with no narrator coming in to fill in the blank spaces and connect things — it takes a lot of skill to curate [the] tape in a way that feels like it's telling a cohesive story that gets at the essence of the [it].
And I think this documentary, especially, takes the Earth, Wind & Fire story and tells us why their legacy is important, why their art is important and lets us get to know them as people in a really elegant [and] thorough way that I really appreciate.
Elamin: What do you make of the kind of historian that Questlove is becoming?
Because I'm interested in the fact that he's becoming an archivist of a certain kind of musical history.
What do you think of that trajectory?
Jay: I think he's come to play a really important role — that I really appreciate — [in] getting these stories told.
He's in a position where he can get funding and promotion and all the right voices to speak to him in order to tell stories that otherwise might not have been spicy enough, or had enough crossover appeal to get told on this scale … and I love that.
You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Jay Smooth produced by Ty Callender.
Analysis
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