Directed by the editor of When We Were Kings, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, Soul Power is about Zaire 74, the musical festival that was supposed to accompany the famous Rumble in the Jungle, a fight sponsored by one of the most cruel dictators in the history of Africa, Mobutu Sésé Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga. He died the year after When We Were Kings (1996) was released.

Soul Power captures the twilight time of the pan-African moment that began in the early 1950s, following the collapse of the colonial powers in Europe. Blacks in Brazil, French-speaking Africa, the United States, and Europe began to make political and artistic links with one another. Instead of seeing their struggles for freedom and basic human rights as local, they saw them as global. And the global had a center: Africa.

Zaire 74, which had the honor of not being sponsored by the dictator—he only wanted to pay for the fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman—was a huge success. The footage in Soul Power shows the happiest Africans in the world. They loved watching the black gods of American, African, and South American pop. The big stars of the show: Soul Brother Number One (James Brown), the Queen of Salsa (Celia Cruz), and Mama Africa (Miriam Makeba). The smaller stars of the show: Bill Withers, B.B. King, the Spinners, and the Crusaders. The footage is, of course, fascinating. There is so much hope in this music, in Ali's rapping, in the faces of the Africans building the stadium or performing in the streets of Kinshasa. But night is falling on this world. Zaire is on the verge of becoming again "one of the dark places of the earth."