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.” 
