Soul Power (2008, Dir: Jeff Levy-Hinte)

The opening credits of Soul Power play over a black background, with the sound of James Brown teasing the audience (and his band) with the well known introduction to Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine. Eventually, we are shown Brown, resplendent in a blue jumpsuit, step away from the microphone for an instant. He drops like a dead-weight onto the stage floor into the splits, and springs back up again like a jack-in-the-box. The band takes this as the cue to start the song. It is jaw-dropping.

Soul Power is a documentary film about the Zaire ’74 music festival which preceded the ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman. It works perfectly as a companion piece to Leon Gast’s 1996 Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings (it was assembled from the 125 hours of outtakes from that film). But where Gast’s film focused on the boxing and Ali in particular, Soul Power is all about the music. James Brown shines here, headlining a music festival that also includes BB King, Bill Withers, The Crusaders and several African artists.

Although we get snippets of Ali being interviewed, it’s never enough and leaves you wanting more. The lengthiest interview shows him too slow to swat a fly on his leg, and in response launches into an amusing explanation that African flies are faster than American flies – because they don’t eat as much. Aside from this, the funniest segment is a sparring match between Ali and Philippé Wynne - the lead singer of vocal group The Spinners. Wynne and his entourage take the opportunity to play the occasion for laughs, with Wynne aping Ali’s footwork, and the rest of the band making him out to be a heavyweight contender. However, as soon as Wynne enters the ring, one hit from Ali puts him in his place, cowering much to the amusement of his audience.

Although promoter Stewart Levine came across as a dope-smoking mess in When We Were Kings, he is in contrast extremely alert in Soul Power, holding the fort with a telephone constantly lodged between his face and shoulder. In this film, it is a Stephen Merchant look-a-like who takes the reins as the film’s token ‘out of place white man in suit’.

Many years ago I was thrilled to find that the DVD of When We Were Kings contained the entire ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ and ‘Thriller In Manilla’ fight telecasts as bonus features. Hopefully when Soul Power is released onto DVD, the extras will contain a wealth of musical performances left out to counter for the obligatory one-song-per-artist limitation that burdens such concert films.

In the end, Soul Power leaves you with the same feeling that Mohammed Ali proclaims to a smiling James Brown in Zaire in 1974. He might get the lyric slightly wrong, but the feeling is still there:

“I got ants in my pants - I gotta dance!”