Melvin Van Peebles' sweet 'Sweet' song

• Van Peebles wrote%2C starred in%2C directed and scored 1971%27s %27Sweet Sweetback%27
• Publicized film by shopping soundtrack to radio stations%2C a first
• Performs Tuesday at a screening of a biopic about his film

It's the music that started a movement.

When film icon Melvin Van Peebles was looking to publicize his soon-to-be-hit Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song in 1971, he turned to radio stations when film houses had no time for the movie.

Peebles wrote the soundtrack to Sweet Sweetback and Earth, Wind and Fire performed it.

"Before me, music soundtracks were sort of afterthoughts," said Van Peebles, 81, on the phone from his home in New York City. "See, I didn't have money, so I said hmm, because only two theaters in the United States would show Sweetback, I used my music to publicize the film, and it was such a success that everybody copied it."

Van Peebles would bring the soundtrack into radio stations, have the disc jockeys play a few songs, and that generated enough interest in Sweet Sweetback to make it a hit. The film started the black exploitation movement in cinema.

Now, he's bringing the music to Lincoln Center. Van Peebles and his group wid Laxative will perform Tuesday, Feb. 25, at a showing of Baadasssss!, a biopic by Van Peebles' son, Mario Van Peebles, about the making of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. There will also be a conversation with Van Peebles, his son, and moderator Greg Tate.

Peebles wrote the soundtracks to his other films and solo albums.

"I was walking down the street about a year and a half ago and I heard a song and it was a song I had written 40-something years ago," Van Peebles said. "It became the anthem of the Wall Street uprising and they're using it everywhere. It was a song I had written for (the 1970 movie) Watermelon Man."

Love, That's America first appeared in Watermelon Man, which tells the story of a white bigot who turns black, and was also released on his '71 album As Serious as a Heart-Attack.

"Music — some people just don't know that part of me," said Van Peebles.

The Van Peebles sound is a bluesy, jazzy spoken-word flow with lots of groove and character — and characters, too. Wid Laxative is composed of members of the New York City-based collective Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, which has Tate as one of its members.

"Forty years ago, I went to a drive-in in Dayton, Ohio, and saw Sweet Sweetback and then it came on with that iconic bass, and me being a bass player, I was hooked right there," said Burnt Sugar and wid Laxative member Jared Michael Nickerson.

Members of Burnt Sugar performed the live Sweet Sweetback, the Hood Opera with Van Peebles 2010 in Paris.

"It's storytelling, it's like old blues or old country artists," Van Peebles said. "It's telling something and then you set it to music so you can dance the night away."