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Zaire’s Moment of the Soul

By JON PARELES
Published: July 2, 2009

Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, the director of the new documentary “Soul Power,” was a film editor in 1995 for “When We Were Kings,” the Oscar-winning documentary directed by Leon Gast about the Rumble in the Jungle, the 1974 heavyweight world championship bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire (now Congo).

That fight had a huge sideshow: Zaire ’74, a three-day music festival of American soul alongside African music, headlined by James Brown and filmed by the same crew that was in Zaire for the fight. “Soul Power” presents that festival from its precarious beginnings to the finale of a shirtless, sweating James Brown singing to an African audience, “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud.”

The festival was a striking sociocultural moment. African-American and Latin musicians were being introduced to Africa and African musicians amid Mr. Ali’s black-power politics and a hodgepodge of visiting music, sports and literary figures. “There was a lot of deeper meaning about why people went there and what it evoked for them,” Mr. Levy-Hinte said.

Brown and other headliners, including B. B. King, Celia Cruz and the Fania All-Stars, the Spinners and Bill Withers, performed at their peak, flaunting bright-colored, sharp-collared, bell-bottomed 1970s outfits that are a fashion show themselves. Americans shared the lineup with African musicians, like the South African singer Miriam Makeba and the top Zairean groups T.P.O.K. Jazz (featuring the guitarist Franco) and Tabu Ley Rochereau.

“Soul Power,” which opens Friday, plunges into the festival offstage and on, incorporating equipment wrangles and dressing-room encounters — like Sister Sledge teaching African girls how to dance the Bump, direct from Philadelphia — along with Brown showing off his quick footwork and splits. It is vérité with minimal explanation and a whirl of sun-drenched color and rhythm.

Zaire ’74 almost didn’t happen. The festival was “a fool’s mission” from the start, said Stewart Levine, who produced it with the South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela. (They had been roommates in the 1960s at the Manhattan School of Music; Mr. Levine produced 15 albums for Mr. Masekela, including his hit single “Grazing in the Grass.”) When Mr. Levine heard about the boxing match in Zaire, he said by telephone from Los Angeles, “it just hit me — how about a music festival?”

He said, “I had a desire to hip the general audience to what wasn’t yet called world music. And I had this cockamamie idea about the festival, and everybody said yeah.”

Not everybody. The government of Zaire subsidized the boxing match; Zaire’s dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, wanted to burnish his country’s image. But Zaire would not finance the festival. So Mr. Levine rounded up backing from bankers in Liberia — their disgruntled representative is a character in “Soul Power” — and preparations began.

Then an injury forced Mr. Foreman to postpone the fight, separating the festival from the bout by six weeks and virtually eliminating the potential audience of international tourists. Mr. Levine had to decide overnight whether to cancel the festival.

But the performers had already been paid half their fees up front, and construction was under way. With contacts at ABC, Mr. Levine said, he prevailed on the sportscaster Howard Cosell to hold back for 24 hours the news that the fight had been postponed, lest the American musicians stay home. He was also lucky, he said, that it was Rosh Hashanah, and many of the performers’ managers were observing the holiday.

Then, as the charter flight was being loaded, James Brown arrived with 40,000 pounds of additional equipment — he had booked more shows in Africa — and refused to board unless it was on the flight with him, Mr. Levine said. The extra gear was somehow stuffed onto the plane. After a refueling stop, Mr. Levine said, “we touched the trees in Madrid on the runway. That’s how severely overweight the plane was.”

The production crew learned belatedly that Zaire’s electricity ran at 220 volts, not the 110 of their American equipment. Luckily, they discovered 110-volt generators that had been donated to Zaire by the United States Agency for International Development (and were little used due to the voltage disparity). The festival was on, more or less as planned; 80,000 people filled the stadium.

“It was interesting to watch the reaction of the mostly African audience,” said Mr. Withers, who in the film holds the crowd rapt singing “Hope She’ll Be Happier,” alone on acoustic guitar. “It’s like standing on the other side of the street watching your girlfriend walk down it and seeing how other people react to her.” The percussive, polyrhythmic salsa of Celia Cruz and the Fania All-Stars was the audience favorite, he said. And no wonder: Afro-Cuban rumba from a previous generation had strongly influenced the current Zairean pop, soukous. The film catches the conga player Ray Barretto in an impromptu jam session with African drummers.

Many of the performers and Mr. Ali himself are shown as starry-eyed about Africa. Mr. Withers, who was well-traveled after nine years in the Navy, was more levelheaded. “I felt like a very privileged person in an unprivileged setting,” he said. “This Mobutu guy, this dictator — that didn’t cheer me up, the disparity in the wealth. There seemed to be a large gap between the chosen people that were around him and everybody else.” But the scene at the hotel where invited guests were staying was singular, he said, “like Hyannisport meets Harlem meets Zaire.”

Zaire ’74 was shot by first-rate documentarians like Albert Maysles, who had made “Gimme Shelter” about the 1969 Altamont concert, and it was recorded in high-quality 16-track sound. But there was no money for postproduction. (The Liberians did end up paying the hotel more than $200,000, Mr. Levine said, because the festival producers had told all the musicians to feel free to put anything they pleased on their hotel tabs.) When it was over, the footage was stored by Mr. Gast, and, largely because of legal disputes, years went by before he completed “When We Were Kings.” Since that film focused on the boxing match, most of the music festival ended up on the cutting-room floor.

That rankled Mr. Levy-Hinte, who became a producer for feature films (“Laurel Canyon”) and documentaries (“Roman Polanski: Wanted & Desired”) for his company, Antidote International Films. He thought about the music footage for a decade, between other projects, and in 2006 decided to get serious about releasing it.

His plan was to put out concert DVDs of the festival’s performances, a fairly straightforward process. Then “I committed the original sin of filmmaking,” he said. “I fell in love with the material instead of following this rational business path.”

It cost about half a million dollars, including licensing the music, to make “Soul Power.” So far there’s no deal for a soundtrack album. The DVDs will be assembled “as soon as humanly possible,” Mr. Levy-Hinte said, though that may well be next year.

“The vast majority of the material has still not been used,” he added. “There may be a whole other movie in there.”

http://www.nytimes.com/20...wanted=all

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Music for adventurous listeners

tA

Tribal Records

One of my fave documentaries, from my fave decade of documentaries.

I don't know what it is about the 70's docu-films, now matter how mundane some of them are, I always end up finding something fascinating about them.

One of my favorite documentaries as well, I mentioned it a few years back on the "James Brown and his Dance Moves" thread.

I especially liked the parts on Phillipe Wynn, Bill Withers, Celia Cruz (...when they were jamming on the plane on the way over to Zaire), and Miriam Makeba. Also loved those bad-ass outfits James Brown and George Foreman were wearing. Anyone interested in Soul music, and the culture, from the 70's needs to catch this flick.

I learned so much from watching this documentary, like how George Foreman offended the people of Zaire by arriving at the airport with his pet dogs (...dogs were a symbol of oppression to the people of Zaire), which turned out to be one more reason why they all cheered for Ali over Foreman. Aside from Ali's personality, George Foreman came across as a bully back in those days. There really wasn't two minutes of this documentary that went by without teaching me something I didn't know.

Nevertheless, this film really focuses on THE MUSIC.

Thanks to tA for the alert.

When will the full JB's concert be released?

It looks and sounds soooo damn GREAT! 6 mins is a travesty!

That Live version of "Same Beat" at the end????? WHEW!!!!!!

PDogz said:

One of my favorite documentaries as well, I mentioned it a few years back on the "James Brown and his Dance Moves" thread.

I especially liked the parts on Phillipe Wynn, Bill Withers, Celia Cruz (...when they were jamming on the plane on the way over to Zaire), and Miriam Makeba. Also loved those bad-ass outfits James Brown and George Foreman were wearing. Anyone interested in Soul music, and the culture, from the 70's needs to catch this flick.

I learned so much from watching this documentary, like how George Foreman offended the people of Zaire by arriving at the airport with his pet dogs (...dogs were a symbol of oppression to the people of Zaire), which turned out to be one more reason why they all cheered for Ali over Foreman. Aside from Ali's personality, George Foreman came across as a bully back in those days. There really wasn't two minutes of this documentary that went by without teaching me something I didn't know.

Nevertheless, this film really focuses on THE MUSIC.

Thanks to tA for the alert.

I think you meant When We Were Kings from the same event another brilliant documentary as well.

BTW,,,

Have any of you read Etta James' story about going there? She was one of the artists who participated, but unlike the joy we saw convied in those performances, the reality of them staying there was scary - at least from what she said.

Harlepolis said:

PDogz said:

One of my favorite documentaries as well, I mentioned it a few years back on the "James Brown and his Dance Moves" thread.

I especially liked the parts on Phillipe Wynn, Bill Withers, Celia Cruz (...when they were jamming on the plane on the way over to Zaire), and Miriam Makeba. Also loved those bad-ass outfits James Brown and George Foreman were wearing. Anyone interested in Soul music, and the culture, from the 70's needs to catch this flick.

I learned so much from watching this documentary, like how George Foreman offended the people of Zaire by arriving at the airport with his pet dogs (...dogs were a symbol of oppression to the people of Zaire), which turned out to be one more reason why they all cheered for Ali over Foreman. Aside from Ali's personality, George Foreman came across as a bully back in those days. There really wasn't two minutes of this documentary that went by without teaching me something I didn't know.

Nevertheless, this film really focuses on THE MUSIC.

Thanks to tA for the alert.

I think you meant When We Were Kings from the same event another brilliant documentary as well.

That's very likely, I haven't actually watched either documentary in several years.