Jamie Lee Curtis dropped a public tribute to Questlove on Instagram this week, and it’s the kind of co-sign that actually carries weight.
Curtis went straight at the drummer, producer, and documentary filmmaker. She wrote: “Oh @questlove thank you for your artistry and groove in showing us how @earthwindandfire came to be what we all remember it was.”
She’s not big-upping someone for the sake of it. Curtis is talking about Questlove going deep on the origin story of one of the most iconic groups in Black music history. Not a greatest-hits recap, not a celebratory biopic. The actual story of how Earth, Wind & Fire came to be. That’s the part most projects leave out entirely.
There’s real craft in that choice. Legacy acts usually get the hits, the drama, and the comeback. The formative years get left behind. Who was in the room? Where did the sound come from? What decisions shaped everything that followed? Most filmmakers skip it. It takes serious knowledge of the music and the era to do it right. Questlove has both.
His credentials for this kind of move are rock solid. His 2021 documentary Summer of Soul unearthed long-buried footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. It took home the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2022. That film didn’t just entertain people. It gave a generation back a piece of its own history. Curtis is saying Questlove did something similar for Earth, Wind & Fire.
The band deserves that kind of care. Maurice White founded Earth, Wind & Fire in Chicago in 1970. They built something that crossed every genre line. “September,” “Boogie Wonderland,” and “Let’s Groove” are not just classic songs. They’re pillars of Black music culture. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, and their sound still fills arenas and playlists worldwide decades later.
White passed away in 2016. That makes getting the founding story right feel urgent. The people who know how it all started won’t be around forever.
Questlove is built for this kind of work. Beyond drumming for The Roots and holding down the Tonight Show stage for over a decade, he’s one of the deepest music historians in the game. He doesn’t just play. He studies. His 2021 book Music Is History traced American culture through fifty years of records. A man with that kind of research background is exactly who you want on a project like this.
Curtis’s own standing adds real weight to the praise. Her Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2023 brought her into a wider cultural conversation. She’s been more publicly engaged since then. She doesn’t throw her name behind things randomly. People pay attention.
Her tribute is unprompted and specific. She names the artistry and the focus on origins directly. That kind of honest, targeted praise generates real curiosity about a project.
For Questlove, it’s another signal that his pivot to documentary filmmaking is the real thing. Earth, Wind & Fire’s origin story is in good hands.
