Soul Power is a concert film shot 35 years ago in Zaire.
Organized to coincide with the "Rumble In The Jungle" -- the Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman fight in 1974 -- the film features breathtaking performances from such artists as The Spinners, Bill Withers, B.B. King and James Brown.
The music festival stretched over three days, and behind the cameras were such renowned cinematographers as Albert Maysles, Paul Goldsmith, Kevin Keating and Roderick Young.
Zaire '74 was organized by South African musician Hugh Masekela and American producer Stewart Levine. It was an ambitious undertaking that sought to combine the best of American R&B and soul artists with leading acts from Africa, all on the same stage.
From the beginning, the idea was to make a movie of the concert, but legal and financial issues got in the way for many years. In 1996, when footage of the Ali-Foreman fight finally became the Oscar-winning film When We Were Kings, the concert footage was rediscovered by filmmaker Jeffrey Levy-Hinte. He was an editor on When We Were Kings.
And he is the director of Soul Power.
None of the footage in Soul Power has ever been seen before. The concert itself features such artists as The Spinners, all choreographed dance moves and matching suits as they sing One Of A Kind Love Affair; Miriam Makeba singing The Click Song; B.B. King singing The Thrill Is Gone and James Brown doing a couple of hits while dancing as if someone just buttered the stage.
It's exhilarating. So is much of the other footage -- the artists on board the plane to Africa, the locals watching the concert preparations, the African musicians, Muhammad Ali talking about himself and how God has made him bigger than all the entertainers and fighters in the world, that he might use his fame for the benefit of the "black man in America."
Soul Power takes place at a specific time in American social and political life, but the movie doesn't do much to fill-in-the-blanks about racial politics in 1974. Certainly, none of the performers at Zaire '74 would have imagined a black president in the White House in 2009.
The movie is crisp and quick and looks as if it were shot yesterday, but for all that, Soul Power is ultimately disappointing. (Although if you never saw the late James Brown in concert, this is probably a must-see proposition.)
Viewers who remember the times and the artists will wish for more concert footage; given the way America tells its own history, younger viewers may not know or understand who's on the stage, why it's important, and why so many of the Americans talk about what it means to them to be in Africa.
A little historical context would have gone a long way.
(This film is rated PG)
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