Soul Power reveals a treasure cache of footage from a 1974 music festival in Zaire that was originally tied to The Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The plan was a one-two combo of cultural power, the world's greatest African and African-American musicians laying the soundtrack for a heavyweight slugfest between two of the most popular black athletes on the planet.

As history would have it, the fight was rescheduled but the Zaire '74 music festival soldiered on as a standalone event. Overshadowed by The Rumble in the Jungle (which eventually went down two weeks later), Zaire '74 never captured the world's cultural consciousness the same as Ali's rope-a-dope domination of Foreman did, and the concert footage has been gathering dust ever since. Finally, with Soul Power, filmmaker Jeffrey Levy-Hinte shows the world what it has missed.



Despite summarizing its tribulations, the film fails to construct a solid narrative around the events of the concert. That's hardly Levy-Hinte's fault, however, as he wasn't the one who shot the footage; he uncovered it while working as an editor on Leon Gast's When We Were Kings. Still, Soul Power makes up for this by working poetic wonders with its editing; it beautifully segues from African drummers to Ali idly banging a beat on his chair, from white construction workers bitching about concert logistics to Kinshasa residents performing in the street.

The film's story is an abstract one, of the African drum and its meanings, from thuds and thumps to James Brown's empowered yelps, to Miriam Makeba's defiant clicks, to B.B. King's knowing twang. There's incredible joy and undeniable genius on display, whether through onstage performances or behind-the-scenes jam sessions. If for nothing else, watch Soul Power for Bill Withers' haunting performance of "Hope She'll Be Happier". Like Ali, the music floats and stings.
 
Words By: Jef Catapang