Create some more blackness

Soul Power

Crit

The makers of this documentary--a sort of musical companion to When We Were Kings, about the festival organized to coincide with the Rumble in the Jungle but actually held six weeks earlier, when George Foreman suffered a cut that delayed the fight--clearly consider James Brown the star, as did the concert organizers, but with all due respect to the GFOS, some of the best bits occur off the stage.

A common theme among those involved in both the concert and the fight is the opportunity for African Americans (and Afro-Caribbeans) to return to their homeland and mix and match with the culture and musical styles of black people not hijacked and hybrided 400 years ago, and several clips show the professional musicians' fascination with the street music of Kinshasa. Brown and Don King discuss the need for black economic independence: "You can't be liberated broke," Brown summarizes. Ali tells of his amazement to find cities and not just forbidding jungle in Zaire--and of having been flown there from Paris by an African pilot and crew. He looks on unsmiling from the ring as one of the Spinners--Billy Henderson, I think--profanes the tools of Ali's trade, light and heavy bags, before climbing into the ring to spar. The once-and-future-champ baits overmatched white sportswriters about racism, something he always delighted in. Well, hell--let's just say every moment with Ali onscreen is as good as any musical moment

And the musical moments are damned good, especially Miriam Makeba, a percussion group called Big Black (not to be confused with the '80s group), and a tiger-impersonating dance troupe whose name I can't find either on IMDb or the film's official site.