DVD review: Soul Power
http://www.t5m.com/nick-clarke/dvd-review-soul-power.html?fmt=news
7th December 2009
by Nick Clarke
If the eyes of the world were on Zaire's capital, Kinshasa, in
October 1974 they were, perhaps understandably, focused more keenly
on Muhammad Ali's world heavyweight title challenge against the
indomitable human wrecking ball, George Foreman - a fight for which
The Greatest displayed his characteristic bombast and preternatural
confidence but which many educated observers feared might end in
tragedy for the Louisville Lip - than on the three-night music
spectacular that had been put together to support it. Yet in many
ways the concert was as symbolic as, if not more so than, the fight
itself. Soul Power is an absorbing, insightful and hugely
entertaining documentary about that concert, from inception to
performance, pieced together by director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte from
extensive footage omitted from the Oscar-winning When We Were Kings,
on which he worked as editor.
Just as the real star of the ring was always Ali, in Kinshasa and all
corners of the world, and all else orbited his burnishing sun, so on
the stage it was James Brown, a man no less assured of his own
magnificence and his role in history, who dominated proceedings. And
in the manner of Brown's super-charged on-stage performances it was,
superficially, an extravagant, spectacular affair; one of the most
extraordinary collective protests against the prevailing white,
Western socio-political structure in the dominant years of black
activism, from 1955-1975; and, more simply, arguably the most
luxuriant and impressive gathering of international black musical
talent in one place either before or since. Yet anyone with even a
passing interest in the race politics of this or any period will
immediately understand that the many strands of African-American
activism, and the fibres of protest that intertwined to make up the
broader race movement , each pulled in many different and often
contrary directions. When it came to black empowerment nothing was
ever as straight-forward as it might first have appeared.
That James Brown headlined the concert, which in turn had formative
ties to the huckster's favourite huckster, Don King (a boxing
promoter, and man, of such chaotic moral bearings that he would
famously enter the ring with one fighter and, should that poor dope
be unfortunate enough to lose, would step over their prone body to
ensure he left with the victor) was something of anathema to notions
of Black Power itself, at least in the Marxist sense espoused by
militant leaders such as Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers
(an organisation by now riven by irreparable internecine disputes and
drawing its last meaningful breaths.) For the Panthers notions of
'blackness' were inextricably linked to grassroots and autonomous
community-led politics and later, especially for Carmichael himself
following a period in self-imposed exile in Guinea-Conakry in 1969, a
more committed strain of pan-Africanism. For men like King the only
colour that really mattered was green. While Brown was far less
garrulous about his capitalist pursuits, instead preferring to talk
of self-empowerment and the freedoms engendered for all black men and
women under the catchall American Dream, King, in his own inimitable
fashion, was far less restrained. For all his talk of African
brotherhood and an unbreakable bond forged in the cradle of
civilisation or, as he puts it, one fashioned "from the root to the
fruit", the one person who really mattered, and indeed matters, to
King is King. In the context of this rather incongruous clash of
political ideologies, an unfettered brand of American capitalism
working hand-in-hand with collective/separatist Black Power Marxism,
that the concert should have taken place at all is not only
remarkable but is also a symbol of both the confusion and the
resistance to that confusion under which black politics functioned
for close to twenty years. Add, too, that this symbolic act of black
empowerment took place under the Orwellian vigilance of President
Mobutu Sese Seko, a totalitarian psychopath prone to appalling acts
of bloodthirsty retribution, and a man supported both financially and
militarily by the CIA, and the whole event becomes even more otherworldly.
But it was very real and remarkably this mesh of political
contradictions neither could nor did detract from what was a
confounding series of powerful live black music performances.
Levy-Hinte alludes to the incongruities, it would have been
impossible not to, but the performances and the personalities behind
them are everything, most notably Brown's whose stillness off stage
directly contradicts not only Ali's rapid-fire verbal dexterity and
adoration for the spotlight but also his own blazing energy and
inherent "soulfulness" once the curtain was raised. The labyrinthine
impossibilities of affirmative black politics in America were not
lost on Brown and his detached demeanour off-stage may have been in
some part an acknowledgement of that acumen, but onstage one could
argue that his music lent a greater weight to the African-American
struggle than anyone else either in or around this event.
Surrounded by an unparalleled accumulation of soul, R&B and African
stars (including Bill Withers, BB King and Miriam Makeba, all of whom
perform hypnotically) Brown gives a master class in live soul
performance. Great soul music is and should be an accumulation of
black history, a canvas on which the artist paints a portrait of the
African-American struggle; the hopes that underpin it; the
aspirations of the collective wrought by the individual; a show of
defiance though bravado, self-affirmation and humour; a
quasi-religious vision of salvation though struggle and torment; an
unyielding display of sexual energy and, ultimately, of rebirth; a
communal experience. Brown's performance in Zaire, fuelled by the
intensity of the African experience, was all those things and more.
Levy-Hinte captures this magnificently and if the ring belonged
unequivocally to Ali then the stage most certainly belonged to The
Godfather of Soul.
.
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