Trapped in a mess of legality for the last 30 years, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte finally gets to release the fantastic leftovers he was forced to edit around for Oscar-bothering fight movie, When We Were Kings. And much of it was well worth the wait. Put together by a spectacularly stoned Stewart Levine and Hugh Masekela, the Zaire ‘74 festival featured an explosion of talent furiously promoted by Don King, and the results are an engrossingly mixed bag.
Bill Withers, James Brown and B.B.King are among the stars expressing an urge to “visit the homeland” and it’s the performances that are the real meat here, and they fortunately hold together what would otherwise be an annoyingly slight affair. The acts interest in ancestral Africa is never explored, which may be down to a lack of footage, but it does leave the feeling that they may simply be paying lip service. It’s a slow starter, with too many flashbulb 70s press conferences, whilst the only dramatic tension on show is from an investment bank worrying about moving amplifiers. Jaws, it aint.
Once the house-lights go down it’s a different story, however, with Withers in particular captivating, while Brown is his usual rocking, rolling, all-conquering self. His Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud) is a particular highlight, with only the looming portraits of President/Dictator Mobuto threatening the party atmosphere.
While the musos are still fascinating figures, the attempts to shoehorn Muhammed Ali into the narrative is actually disruptive – his magnificent self promotion showing the concert to be strictly a second-stringer to the Rumble in the Jungle main event and undermining Brown’s joyous to-camera exclamation; “Damn right I’m somebody!”
A movie of two halves then: One a boring look at tour logistics, the other a huge, superfly celebration of liberation in a locale direly in need of an excuse to let it all hang out.
