January 8, 2025 • 57 mins
The show must go on! The Zaire ‘74 Music Festival is underway. The sounds of the diaspora grace the stage, united by the drum. Bill Withers stuns listeners with his raw talent. BB King wails on his guitar in one of his all-time best performances. Celia Cruz croons to the crowd, who finds an unexpected familiarity in her Afro-Latina rhythms. Miriam Makeba hypnotizes her audience and ties the whole ensemble together with her unifying spirit. And finally, James Brown emerges to close out the show. His performance makes history as he steps into the crowd and shares the mic with his fans under the rising sun; together they shout “I’m Black and I’m Proud”. This is the Soul of ‘74.
LITERARY REFERENCES
“The Rumble in the Jungle” by Lewis Erenberg
“Hit Me, Fred” by Fred Wesley (autobiography)
“LATIN N.Y.” magazine, editor-in-chief, Diane Weathers
“Lawdy Miss Clawdy: The True King of the ‘50s” by Lloyd Price and William Waller (autobiography)
OTHER REFERENCE MATERIALS
“When We Were Kings” (Documentary by Leon Gast and David Soneberg)
“Soul Power” (Documentary by Jeffery Kusama-Hinte and David Sonenberg)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If there was such a thing as a time machine,
and Gary Stromberg could step inside this wondrous contraption and
travel back in time to experience just one performance from
the Zaire seventy four concert. Again, which performance would he choose?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Wow, James Brown's the obvious one because of the intense
enthusiasm of the audience, and he really did perform. I mean,
he's the godfather of soul for a reason. Yeah, it
would have to be James Brown.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Gary, who was the music festival's pr man, is still
singing the praises of what he experienced. Really, the entire
festival was something to behold.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
The Crusaders I thought they were great, Spinners were great?
Who else? And find y'all starts were wonderful.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
If you were there, you would easily understand why he
might have trouble picking just one performance. Gary was there.
He knows how incredible the three day concert was, but
he also knows what it took to make sure it
even happened. He knows intimately how unlikely it was that
they could pull it off, but they did. They beat
(01:09):
the odds. Gary and really his friends, the festival directors
Hugh and Stu, pulled it off Zaire. Seventy four was
one of those rare peak moments in world culture and
it all went down in Zaire. So I wondered what
did the locals think about those famous American pop superstars
(01:30):
who'd come all the way to Kinshasa to perform for them.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
While James Brown was obviously the biggest star, they were
very welcoming to all of the talent, both they're African
musicians as well as the American musicians. For them, it
was a really joyous experience as well.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
People overflowed the stadium turnstiles eager to see the American
black performers, but also they were equally, if not more
excited about the African megastars and the Afro carena in performers.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It was a festival seating. The field was open standing
remotely and then the sides of the stadium were filled
up as well with well, I don't think it was
reserve seating. It was just they opened the doors and
let anybody you could sit wherever you wanted to. But
the field was just totally filled with people dancing and
just loving what they were seeing. They were having a
great time.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
With A seventy four with him and Stu was like, Hey,
let's get all the biggest black artists on the planet
on a plane to Africa and do a concert for
this fight.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
I mean, this is a festival above and beyond any
even Woodstock. There'd be albums that there'd be a documentary.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
Just seeing them in the marketplace, seeing them hanging out
in the hotel, seeing them play with one another like that.
Whole that was just a revelation. So you immediately get
the sense that you're in this incredibly special place, and
it was a kind of responsibility that goes with them.
For me personally, some of the greatest musical artists who
ever lived.
Speaker 6 (03:04):
The whole experience of the Zaire Kid Shata was unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
The American side, James Brown is the headliner.
Speaker 7 (03:12):
You had bb King, you had Big Black who was
just so bigger than life. You had the Pointer Sisters,
you had Sister Sledge and they were so sweet and adorable.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Franco and his jazz orchestra, tabou Let and his rumba orchestra,
Johnny Puchecko, Celia Cruz, Ray Barretto, I mean, everybody is there.
Speaker 8 (03:36):
I remember the Spinners, and to me, springtime didn't start
until I could hear could it be on Falling in
Love on the radio. You know, people don't know these
acts now necessarily, but they were huge.
Speaker 9 (03:47):
I was in odd at all the different celebrities that
were there.
Speaker 7 (03:50):
This was my first big concert.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
And then being able to share this energy with like
and sit in the wonder of how excited like everyone
in zaire, all these Africans are that y'all are here.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Welcome to Rumble, the story of Ali Foreman and the
Soul Music of nineteen seventy four. I'm your host, Zarren Burnett,
the IID from iHeart Podcast and School of Humans. This
is Rumble. Previously on Rumble with Lamumba out of the way,
(04:38):
you get Mubutu, who's the.
Speaker 7 (04:40):
Biggest kleptocrat you can imagine, and we do the bidding
of the United States because it lined his pockets there
still getting what they were getting before, but with a
black face in front.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
This was a dictatorship out and out. People were terribly
fearful of this guy.
Speaker 10 (04:56):
All these soldiers come out of nowhere, turn their guns
on mccraft.
Speaker 7 (05:02):
I got to go to the marketplace and meet the
different people.
Speaker 8 (05:06):
George's I ain't cut that bad you saw how fat
he is.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
He's about to lose his title. It's September nineteen seventy
four and Wally Bean, an American press agent, travels to
Kinshasa to cover the music festival. Once he gets situated
the white press agent Bean writes a series of letters
(05:31):
back to the US. Highlights are published reporting on what
all there is to see here, eat and experience in Zaire.
From a syndicated story, Wally Bean reports.
Speaker 11 (05:43):
Thought you would like to know that the James Bond
influence has reached the Old Congo now known as Zaire.
The native self tourists' authentic spears that break down into
three parts they could fit in a suitcase. Despite all
the scare stories that appeared in the American press, Kinshasa,
formerly known as Leopoldville, is proving about as dangerous as
Philadelphia on a Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
To bring his point home, the press agent Waldy Bean
gives an example of the sort of dark hearted and
scurrilous characters that he does have to worry about running
into in Kinshasa. It's mainly a band of ego driven
American writers.
Speaker 11 (06:18):
We're having great fun with his I year seventy four
music concerts, and the only dangerous characters I've met are
George Plimpton and Norman Mahler. George wants to go up
the Congo River in a canoe or some such. Mailer's
in a bad mood because his stomach is upset. Usually
when Mailer gets in a bad mood, he wants to
fight somebody. One night at Hugh Hefner's house, he wanted
to fight Bud Sholberg. Scholberg refused because he once had
(06:40):
refused to fight Ernest Hemingway and he didn't want to
step down in class.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Part of Mahler's irritability was due to the fact that,
as the Asberry Park Press noted in its September twenty
fifth edition from nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 12 (06:54):
The super fight of the Century has been postponed until
late October.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
That's the reason in for Mailer's mood. However, the good
news is for folks other than Norman Mailer.
Speaker 12 (07:05):
But a super cultural festival bringing together Latin American, Afro
American and African dancers and singers will nonetheless get underway
here on Saturday, only one day later than scheduled In
the days.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Before that same Zaire seventy four music festival kicks off.
The streets of kinshasa are a buzz with people. The
city pulses with traffic, the hum of pedestrians, and the
colorful commotion of street business comes alive as the sounds
of the peddlers and the merchants fill the air. There's
a carnivalesque spirit. There's also an ambient, free floating sense
(07:42):
of anticipation, and, as one newsman from the Associated Press
reports from the capital of Zayre, the.
Speaker 13 (07:49):
City of more than one million throbs with music throughout
the night. The parking lot in front of the luxurious
Intercontinental Hotel has been turned into a vast open air
entertainment area, with up to two twenty five dancers performing
at a time. The band plays for hours without stopping,
the musicians taking a breather, one at a time.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
This same writer also relies on the old tropes of
Africa to make sense of it all. To the folks
back home.
Speaker 13 (08:15):
Outsider's fine, the roar of the bulldozer has long since
replaced the roar of the lion.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Here and then he follows that choice metaphor with this observation.
Speaker 13 (08:25):
Visitors are likely to find that instead of crocodiles. The
mighty Congo River running by the city is more likely
to feature water skiers enjoying themselves in the sun. Instead
of a dinner featuring wild gang cooked over a campfire.
Most visitors enjoy meat and foul flown in from other
areas with the bottle of houdon Cade or some other
French wine.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
You hear it right, Lions, crocodiles, bush beat and the
Congo River versus the water skiers, bulldozers and French wine.
This ap writer wants his readers to know civilization and
modernity have finally arrived in the dark heart of Africa.
That's the subtext, and in case you weren't sure, that
was the point. The writer makes his intent inescapable when
(09:08):
he writes.
Speaker 13 (09:09):
The Africa of the Tarzan movies does not exist in
some parts of this vast country about the size of
the western United States. In one area, there's a tribe
of pygmies that still live in the trees to protect
themselves from the animals. There is relatively little tourist business
in Zaire at present, but a steady stream of businessmen
involved in the mining industries gold, silver, copper keep the
(09:33):
hotels filled.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
In other words, before the Zaire seventy four festival and
the Rumble in the Jungle, most of the pale faced
folks who traveled to Zaire came to take advantage of
the postcolonial nation. Primarily, they came from the extractive industries
who helped put Mabutu in power. They were after gold, silver, copper,
(09:55):
box site. And now Mabutu wants his nation to become
a new plague for the white and wealthy, like Kenya
was for the Brits at the time. And Mabutu knows
the best way to draw the westerners in is with
some black culture. Thus the three day concert and heavyweight
title fight that sold as a global celebration of blackness,
(10:18):
a spectacle that would be, as Don King might say,
the lux the world has never seen before. But this
moment is about more than that. It's really a celebration
of the African diaspora. It's a homecoming for a far
flung family, one still loosely connected by blackness and the
bonds of culture. As the billboards standing tall over kinshasa proclaim,
(10:43):
welcome to the land of your ancestors. This moment marks
a reconnection of those family bonds, the ones that were
intentionally severed by the Transatlantic slave trade. Yet those bonds
could not be fully broken, and the sound of the
drum is proof of that. Back to the Asberry Park
(11:04):
Press and their reports.
Speaker 13 (11:06):
The main beat up the Zaiyir Festival, already being drummed
in the streets of Conshata this past week is the
calypso Zayiyan that African slaves took from the country last
century to the New World, where it still flourishes, particularly
in the Caribbean and Latin America.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
The rhythms of the drum are all the evidence one
needs to know the family has come home. In the theater,
there's an age old maxim the show must go on.
Boxing promoter Don King lived by that same logic.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
When George Foreman gets cut in training, the music festival
has to go on.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
As Lewis Ehrenberg, author of the book Rumble in the Jungle, recounts,
it just isn't possible to reschedule the entire event. The
reason for that was simple. It came down to three words,
schedules and contracts.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
All these artists have other commitments. They can't hang around
for another five weeks to see if Horman the cut
will heal.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Which means the fight promoters and festival directors must make
a difficult decision the three day Music Festival Zaire seventy four.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
But gets separated from the fight and any interest tourists coming,
flight fans around the globe. I mean that just burns out,
That doesn't really happen in a major way, and it
kills much of the festival itself.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
The whole point of having Muhammad Ali and George Foreman
come to Zaiir for the rumble in the jungle, and
then the rationale for adding the three day music festival
was the guarantee that the eyes and the ears of
the world would be on Zayir. Now Mabutu has invested
roughly twenty million dollars for this global advertisement of his
(12:49):
power and the prestige of his nation, and it's all
coming undone. It risks becoming an absolute failure on the
world stage. But then, if you'll remember, Howard Cosell agrees
not to break the news of Foremans cut during Monday
night football, so the musicians then get on the plane
and all fly over to Zaire. Anyway, a lie saves
(13:12):
the day. Or maybe the temporary omission of the truth
saves the day. Either way, there is no way on
God's green earth that James Brown would have flown to
Zaire if he had known the truth. And no James Brown,
no show, this move true Dambutu and Don King saves
the day. Now the musicians are in Zaire and the
(13:33):
show goes on. Zaire seventy four brought black music and
black voices from both Africa and America to the stage,
and that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 14 (13:46):
I'm thinking about the longstanding relationship that black folks in
America in particular have had with the notion and the
concept and the performance and the expression of what we
call song, and how songs have been a channel for
us to kind of focus center, reclaim, recoup our humanity.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
That's Lenae Denise.
Speaker 14 (14:12):
I am known. Maybe perhaps in the broader world is
DJ lene Denise.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Being a music scholar. DJ Lenee Denise thinks a lot
about the history and theory and the meaning of music
and culture, like, for example, W. E.
Speaker 14 (14:28):
Du Boyce's notion of sorrow songs and him thinking about
the old Negro spiritual as a place of refuge but
also as a sort of cluoded speak, and perhaps the
roots of what he refers to as double consciousness right
is that we have never had really the luxury, following
(14:49):
the enslavement of folks to kind of have a non
political relationship with music.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
There is one inescapable reality of racism for black people.
Each of us is representative of all black people. Thus,
everything that a black artist creates or puts out into
the world can be treated as social commentary and can
also be treated as commentary on the ever evolving notion
of blackness. The thing is, Black America is aware that
(15:19):
the world is always listening to us. This dates back
to the days of enslavement. Thus, anything a Black American
says in public is coded for our safety. There is
what we can say amongst each other, and it is
not the same as what we can say in our
artwork or in our speeches, in our books, in poetry,
or even in our interviews in foreign countries. This awareness,
(15:40):
this shared self consciousness of our double existence as a
person and as a black person, perhaps can most easily
be felt by others in our music.
Speaker 14 (15:50):
That isn't to say that every time we touch a
song it's political, but I think that ultimately given the
conditions under which we find ourselves as descendants of folks
who are in slaved. Music is a political force.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Music has always been a part of black social movements,
even going back to folk songs and the blues and
vaudeville their social commentary in all of it. In the
mid twentieth century America that became more intentional. Music became
more distinctly political.
Speaker 14 (16:20):
The nineteen fifties gospel movement that was absolutely fueled by politics.
When you consider the fact that Martin Luther King would travel,
you know, many times to Detroit to be in conversation
with Arita Franklin's father, CEO Franklin, fundraising, and so that
golden age of gospel is overlooked as being a real
(16:42):
important Black musical grounding moment when you think about folks
like Sam Cook, who was politically astute and also encouraging
black folks to own their own labels as an extension
of political activism and the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
The sixties saw on you mental anthems from the likes
of Sam Cook, Nina Simone, the Staples singers. Their music
often described the struggle or bolstered the movements for change
then in nineteen sixty eight, James Brown dropped any pretext
or coy poetic metaphor. He decided, in his inimitable James
(17:20):
Brown way, to just say it with his chest when
he drops this new black national anthem for the streets.
As you may recall, there was his era defining song
say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud. That song
shook up the world. It became the soundtrack for the
long hot summers of the late sixties, and suddenly all
(17:42):
sorts of other performers, athletes, Hollywood stars, they were all
saying the same thing. In the world of sports. This
new wave of Black pride was of course, led by
the ever defiant Muhammad al Li. These musicians, they're documenting
all of this in song and presenting it on stage
in Zaire.
Speaker 14 (18:03):
Our stories are coming through the lyrics, are coming through
lived experience, or coming through the rhythms.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
At the Festival Zaire seventy four, those rhythms reunite this
separated family, the music and the heritage of the Black
diaspora now home again in Africa. In the final days
before the shows began, the bands and the superstar performers
(18:30):
spend their days in rehearsal we.
Speaker 9 (18:32):
Were on stage.
Speaker 7 (18:33):
We had to rehearse because Fred Wesley would rehearse the
band and the dancers had to be there for the
whole thing to make sure that we knew what the
rundown of the show was going to be. And we
had a choreograph to that.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
That's Low of Love Dancer for James Brown, and she
recalls how.
Speaker 7 (18:49):
So when we were there in the daytime, you saw
all the different people who were like claiming the tallest
polls to hang those amps and those speakers. Because the sound,
I was like, this is going to be like something
that from out of space.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
When they weren't rehearsing, the stars and performers enjoyed the
day's sightseeing in Zaire. Thanks to the documentary film Creves,
those rare moments are captured for posterity.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
These revelations are like when they're in the market, particularly
it's Fanya, but it was the rest of them, like
interacting to people or playing the music like they just
felt electrified being around folks that had such wonderful energy.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And that's Jeffrey Kusama Hinti, editor of the Fight film
When We Were Kings and director of the music festival
film Soul Power, both of which focus on the days
of Zaire seventy four and the Rumble in the Jungle.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
I don't think anybody knew who the spinners were in
Zayre or not many any people knew who James Brown was,
and yet there was this kind of connection that was formed.
I think particularly the artists felt that, you know, carry
them along, and I really believe that it's some of
their best recordings. I mean, if you listen to the recordings,
the energy and the passion, it was just truly phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Zay Year seventy four began as the dream and creation
of two men, Hugh Masekela and Stuart Levine, and Hugh
Masekela's son Selemma remembers how his father, Hugh.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Was so excited and it brought him so much joy
to know that, like, if I can get James and
Bill and all these folks, if I can let the
continent touch them in this way, then when they get
back home, they're going to be tell everybody like Yo,
Africa's popping.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Finally, after years of dreaming and months of working their
asses off, the moment has finally arrived and as the
show kicks off, their plans and hopes seem to be
coming true.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Then you see that in the experiences, in the wide
eyed discovery that all of those musicians and artists have,
and then being able to like share this energy with
like and sit in the wonder of how excited like
everyone in Zaire and all these Africans are that y'all
are here. And that was really his question. It was
things like that that gave his soul Pete.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
On Sunday, September twenty second, nineteen seventy four, the doors
to the Arena Stadium in kinshasa finally swing open and
let in the crowd. The opening night is filled with
all the promise of the festival. The bands, who rehearsed
for days are backstage ready, yet also a little nervous
to perform. Some gather in small circles. They make jokes
(21:33):
to break up the tension and alleviate the jitters. The
festival directors stalk the hallways there for any last minute
hiccups or emergencies, but they have to be feeling proud
of their accomplishment. They've done it. The show will go
on with some of the biggest names in music taking
the stage, the speakers blasting, and a buzz among those
(21:55):
locals and attendance. The vibe inside the eighty thousand seat
stadium is truly a special moment in time. The first
act to take the stage for the opening night is
the American group The Spinners.
Speaker 7 (22:12):
I remember The Spinners were on and I was in
the wings watching.
Speaker 9 (22:16):
The show because I'm finally getting to see the show again.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
That's James Brown's dancer, Lola Love, and.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
The manager tells me to run out there and grab
Filipe Win and hug him.
Speaker 9 (22:26):
I said, I'm.
Speaker 7 (22:28):
Sorry, I can't do that. If I would have did that,
James Brown would have fired me. Okay, No, I could
not go out there.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Her fear of her boss, James Brown, overcomes the fact
that she desperately wants to go out there on stage.
Speaker 9 (22:41):
Like I was a crazy person or crazy about the Spinners.
They're amazing, but I would never do that, not with
James Brown. They were amazing though.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
After the Spinners leave the stage, they're followed by a
Zayiian group called tp Okay Jazz. They invite Franco a
zayiretar and a consultant for Zaire seventy four to join
them on stage. The Zayirean pop group plays off kilter
jazzy dance music. It's an eleven song set. It features
(23:12):
a guitar player, Franco, and that's an interesting choice. Earlier
he was an advocate for Mabutu and his campaign of authenticity,
but more recently he's come out as a critic of
the Mabutu regime. However, on this night, Franco and Tpok
Jazz just focus on the music and the crowd and
the rhythm. With Franco on guitar. The band's seven piece
(23:35):
brass section is backed by super tight drums. The lead
singer among the front line of singers is a Zayirean
musician named Sam Mangwana. He's the son of an Angolan
mother and a Zimbabwean father, and he's a captivating presence
on stage. After the sunshiny pop sound in the full
(23:57):
stage of Franco and Tpok Jazz, the next act is
an American folk singer. It's just him and his guitar,
but that's all he needs. If anyone can command the
stage alone, it's Bill Withers.
Speaker 9 (24:13):
He was so soulful with that guitar and his voice.
Speaker 7 (24:17):
The voice became an instrument and it was just so
mesmerizing and soulful.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
As Bill Withers strums on his guitar, the mostly African
audience is drawn into his performance, even if they can't
understand his English language lyrics. As James Brown bandleader Fred
Wesley recalls.
Speaker 6 (24:36):
Bill Withers, he didn't need a band, He didn't need anything.
He was just as dynamic as everybody else with a
whole band. You know, it's better had the whole band
over there, and Dave Brown had his whole band, BBK
had his bad but Bill waded by himself just trumped
all of them. It was so amade at how he
could sing and the sound was perfect. Everything was perfect
(24:59):
about his before.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And for Fred, it was there in that stadium in Conshase.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
That's when I realized who Bill Woodles was. I mean,
he could really sing and he could really play the guitar.
You know, it was magical.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
When Bill Withers breaks into song, the stadium grows quiet.
The entire crowd is united in rapt silence as they
listened to Bill strum and sing his heart out for them.
Not dissimilar to Miriam Mkiba, Bill Withers leaves it all
on the stage.
Speaker 6 (25:33):
This song he did in Africa by himself with a
guitar was another song, Ain't No Sometimes that's good, but
it's a shame. I can't remember the name of the song,
but he thinkured it was the highlight of the whole festival.
Speaker 10 (25:46):
You know.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
The song was Hope She'll be Happier. It features his
overly simple guitar picking that allows the melody to hit
you square in the gut. Sweat pours down his face
as he sings. Maybe the darkness of the hour makes
me seem lonelier than I am. Over the darkness, I
(26:08):
have no power. Hope She'll be happier With him, it
was perfect.
Speaker 6 (26:13):
It was perfectly in tune and his performance it'll make
you cray. I mean, he was so good.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Thinking back on Bill Withers' performance, Gary is just as effusive.
Speaker 13 (26:24):
Well.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I love Bill Willers. He was a client of mine.
There were a couple people that I had gotten for
the festival, Withers being one of them. Bill Withers is
just an incredible guy with an amazing backstory.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Bill Withers came from truly humble beginnings. He worked installing
restrooms in seven forty sevens and was an unlikely star.
Not to mention, he also faced a different challenge.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Bill Withers was a stutterer.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
However, he was able to overcome that when he was
on stage.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
He never stuttered when he sang, but he stuttered at
all other times. So he had a terror time communicating.
And when I got him as a client, he just
didn't think he could do this, because he could, he stuttered,
and so it took a long time before he had
got the confidence to meet the press and deal with them.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Despite his self doubts and his reluctance, Bill Withers pressed on,
which led him to this stage in Zaire in nineteen
seventy four.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
And he was an incredible artist, you know, a very
sensitive guy, but he just needed to get the kind
of confidence. When I first had him, he just couldn't
do interviews. But as he became successful, he started to
open up and it was wonderful.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
However, it wasn't the fame and the love and the
adulation that gave Bill Withers the confidence to blossom.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Instead, Gary believes music was what allowed him to open
up to the world.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Unlike many of the other American musicians who'd take the stage.
Bill Withers had already traveled the world. He'd spent nine
years in the US Navy. He'd already been to Africa.
Thus he looks out at Mabutu Zayir with more educated eyes.
As The New York Times reports, Bill Withers says that
he quote felt like a very privileged person in an
(28:12):
unprivileged setting. But while he's up there on the stage
at Zayre seventy four, Bill Withers discovers he has this
sense of the audience that feels wholly new to him.
As he later tells The New York Times, quote, it
was interesting to watch the reaction of the mostly African audience.
It's like standing on the other side of the street
(28:33):
watching your girlfriend walk down it and seeing how other
people react to her. Throughout the three day music festival,
the American and African artist take turns on stage, and
soon enough, out on stage comes the woman known as
Mama Africa, Miriam Makiba.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
Oh, Miriam Jesus otherworldly.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
That's how Jeffrey Kusama Hinti remembers Makiba's performing. It's in Zayir.
It's like Selema Masechela said about witnessing.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Her, she gave it all, Like every breath, every piece
of her chest and heart, she gave it all.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
When she graces the stage in Zayir, the South African exile,
is demonstrably overjoyed to be performing before an African crowd again.
She's draped in a stunning dress. Her look is capped
off with an eye arresting hairdoo of the Fula tradition.
She wears multi colored beads that look like balls suspended
(29:36):
in the braids that decorate her head. Makiba introduces herself,
telling the audience her full name, Zenzile Makiba guagshu Enguvama,
and she wins a laugh from the crowd when she
makes fun of how Westerners like me can't pronounce her
name correctly. To the thrill of the audience, Mikiba sings
her songs the South African anthem I'm a Pondo, as
(30:00):
well as her international hit the Click Song. This is
another playful jab at westerners like me. By the way,
it's called the click song because Westerners can't pronounce the
real name of the song. Next, she sings her song
unk Ko Kozo. This is followed by a ballad, a
song that her daughter Bongi wrote. The song is called
(30:21):
west Wind. In a break in her performance, Mikiba speaks
to the mostly Zayarean crowd and then she sings a
song in Lingala in praise and honor of their dictatorial leader, Mabutu.
It's a strange thing for the internationally savvy musician to do.
Perhaps she's doing it for their safety, for the safety
(30:41):
of the crowd, or perhaps she sang it as a
way to allow her to sing for the African people
and connect them to themselves despite Mabutu. We do not know.
What we do know is that Miriam knew well what
she stood for and as an artist and as a symbol,
she'd been acting as a musical ambassador ever since she
(31:02):
first came to the United States and was lifted up
by Harry Belafonte. To provide some context for that and
to reflect on Miriam's impact, here again is the artist
in black music. Historian DJ Scholarship, I think, on.
Speaker 14 (31:16):
Top of Mariam Makayba landing in the US and introducing
a US audience to I'm going to say this in
quotes to African music, because I'm not sure that once
the music got there, people were super invested in understanding
distinction between countries, right, I think that they thought of
her as this kind of novelty African woman who clicked
(31:38):
with her mouth.
Speaker 12 (31:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
In other words, most Americans and folks in the West
never saw Miriam coming, which meant they would underestimate her. Meanwhile,
here's this.
Speaker 14 (31:49):
Woman who was well versed in African politics and oftentimes
invited back to the continent, representing South Africa and her
political struggle in exile in front of the UN right,
which again, does it fit in the narrative that we
have her as this African woman who was saved from
her country.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
If anything, with each song she sang, she'd come to
help bring Black Americans back home because with Miriam Mikiba,
as my pops would.
Speaker 15 (32:15):
Tell me, you could fill a kindred nature to Miriam
Mkiva's music. Next, she wasn't singing against anybody. She was
singing four all the Africans who have been spread around
the world and have been separated from themselves. She was saying, no,
we know where you are, we haven't lost track of you,
and we all hi together on this Earth. No matter
(32:39):
how this shit happened, here we are and so you
felt more connected to Africa with her than anybody else.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
On day two of Zire seventy four, things change noticeably.
For the first night, the size of the crowd is
somewhat underwhelming.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
This was a three day festival and we were hopeful
of selling out the three days. But so the first
night of the festival that almost nobody was there and
we were stunned. How did that happen? Why we thought
it was really going well.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
But the truth was, on that first night the eighty
thousand seat stadium was barely half full.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Why turns out Mabutu had not signed off on it,
had not given permission to attend the festival, and people
wouldn't go unless they got permissioned from Mabutu.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Based on what we just heard last episode, you can
understand well why the Zayirean crowd wouldn't want to cross Mabutu.
For Zai Year seventy four. To be any kind of success,
someone would need to go and speak with the dictator
and get Mabuutu's blessing.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Someone from our on our side got to him that
day and explained to him what had happened.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
It turned out to be a harmless oversight. You see,
the dictator didn't realize no one would show up unless
he told his people that it was okay. He didn't
fully realize how scared of him they were. Guess he'd
done a better job than even he was aware. Thus
all the empty seats. But that was easy enough to fix.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And the next day he came out in the media
or whatever however he communicated to his people he thought
they should go.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Bet you can guess what happens next, and the.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Place was sold out the next two days. It was
magical to see nobody's showing up to selling out in
two days.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
On the second day, BB King performs, the African crowd
is thrilled to hear the world famous American bluesman strum
on his guitar Lucille.
Speaker 5 (34:39):
One of the things I've just sent shivers up my
spine is I remember, there's a shot which must be
in sole power of BB King playing and literally it's
like you're rack focusing the perspiration across his face down
his guitar, and just like that intimacy which they so captured.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
That's what Jeffrey Kusama hin, he remembers from the footage.
He also was taken by how.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
That intimacy is also related to the intensity of the performance.
So I think you're really getting a deep insight into
the genius of these artists just so unique.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
BB King plays a few of his big blues hits,
his guitars ache singing out into the crowd. When BB
King picks out the familiar tune of the thrill Is Gone,
the Zyirean crowd dances in time, their joyful faces glow
under the stadium lights.
Speaker 15 (35:33):
BBA is going to do bb King songs and people
admired that about him. He had to hit your thrill
Is Gone, which made the top of all the charts.
So now it's like Willie Nelson doing Stardust. All of
a sudden, everybody knows about him, you know. And he
was humble and he took no shit, which is a
(35:53):
hell of a combination to be humble and take no shit.
So people loved him, you know. He helped introduce a
lot of people to being open to different musicians, not
even to a genre, but just to musicians.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Fellow graduate of the Chiplin Circuit, Fred Wesley, was friends
with b. B. King before they arrived in Africa. Over there, though,
Fred is struck by how BB King he felt empowered.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
He just took on another aura and anxiety. He became
BB King.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
You know what exactly does that mean? To become BB King?
Speaker 6 (36:30):
I mean a blues artist came to Africa and he
saw how the Africa music and the blues music came together.
And I can't explain how how he took on a
bigger aura from himself. You know, in Africa, who got
B be King one of the artists, But he became
BB King, the baster of the blues.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
The effect that his African homecoming had on the old
Delta blues man, It's like a revelation for King.
Speaker 6 (37:00):
He talked to me like that too, you know, like yes,
I think we should do a special show. And it
was strange how he took um.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
In fact, I guess we all did.
Speaker 6 (37:10):
We all kind of did, but bb really got to
be the star of the show there. B. B.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
King's daughter Shirley King, also remembers how much the trip
to Zaire meant to her father and how it helped
him reframe his sense of himself.
Speaker 16 (37:26):
Sometime, as blues artists, we don't think that our music
mean as much as his child and everything. But my
father started appreciating himself, He started appreciating who he was,
and he started appreciating the history of Africa. And he
told me, if I ever had a chance or got
a chance to go over there, please do it.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
The trip to zi Ear changed BB King.
Speaker 16 (37:50):
It was more about my father really loving what Africa
was about and what it did to his spirits. I
think it really made it odd And.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
When BB King returned home he shared his memories of
Zayir with his daughter.
Speaker 16 (38:06):
When he was start talking about it, I could almost
see tears building up in his eyes. That's how much
he truly enjoyed going over there and you know, doing
this thing, and then the fact of what they were
doing it for. You know, he felt honored to be
a part of some next great.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
After BB King, the Pembe Dance Troup takes the stage.
It's another African act. The dance troupe is massive. There
are three hundred members of the ensemble that take the
stage at one point or another. It's an incredible feast
for the eyes. The dance troup. It wears colorful, exaggerated
animal inspired costumes as they engage in Zayrean ceremonial dance.
(38:50):
There are so many dancers on stage that at one
point the hastily constructed stage nearly collapses, but it doesn't
after that. It's an another American act, the Pointer Sisters.
Despite their eye catching costumes, the Zayirean audience doesn't know
what to make of the sister act. As photographer Lynn
(39:11):
Goldsmith recalls.
Speaker 10 (39:13):
When they saw the Pointer Sisters, I think they were
dumbfound like why are these women dressed like this? Why
what are those songs? They were like, oh yeah, And
the Pointer Sisters were a huge American act, big in
Europe too, but no in Africa.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Bomb Overna not there himself. Jeffrey Kasama Hinti witnesses the
same thing in the footage from Zayere seventy four.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
The Pointer Sisters. Their performance was very peculiar, The songs
were odd, they had this kind of carnivalesque costuming and
it was just a really it was an interesting, I
don't know what kind of performance.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
It was.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
The same thing happens with another American act, Sister Sledge.
Speaker 5 (39:55):
We have them in the rehearsal, which I just love
that scene. I mean they're like teenagers. They're young and
they're just having to blast. But their performance in the
concert was it didn't foreground what they were able to do,
and I just felt it wouldn't be fair to put
it in.
Speaker 10 (40:12):
It was pretty weird how unresponsive that many people were
to so many artists who all came out there to
give their best. It was kind of like, what's going
on here?
Speaker 6 (40:27):
You know?
Speaker 10 (40:28):
It wasn't their kind of music. It was like just
not African.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
But the mood changes again when another queen takes the stage.
When Celia Cruz graces the boards in Zayir, she's dressed
in a dazzling array of colors, her makeup on point,
her hair pulled back into a tight bun. Her stage
presence is compared to a peacock of song, and for
(40:54):
good reason. The Latin sounds of the Caribbean acts from
Cuba and Puerto Rico, represented by Cruz, Johnny Pacheco and
the Fania All Stars, are an instant hit with the
African audience. The performers in crowd connect through the drums,
through dancing. Because the body never lies, these driving rhythms
feel the same as when the more familiar African acts
(41:18):
take the stage. The music contains something recognizable back to
DJ Lenee Denise, the new eu.
Speaker 14 (41:26):
Rikan sound that is rooted in the kungas and the
bungo drums. There's this very deep and long standing musical
connection between the you know, the congo and Cuba, right,
So folks are coming home.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
The Afro Cuban sound, the Puerto Rican polyrhythmic beats, the
congas and bongos, it is all unmistakably African in origin.
This feeling of recognition pulses through the crowd. The drums
pound in time with the people's shared heartbeat.
Speaker 14 (41:57):
I think that people were able to identify each other
in the drum and the sounds and even the wallah guitar.
Because what's important here is, yes, this kind of homecoming
to the continent, but equally important is people from the
US hearing these contemporary African musicians and hearing themselves in it.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Bill Withers, for one, recognizes this connection while he is
in Zaire. In a moment captured by the documentary film
Cruise Cameras, Bill Withers says, to be be king quote,
so what we're coming back here with is what we
left here with plus the influences we picked up from
living where we live for the last three four hundred years.
(42:40):
So we've evolved in one corner, they've evolved in the
other corner. And now we're gonna come back. We're all
gonna listen to each other. Somebody asked me, what are
you going to bring back? Are you going to bring
back any souvenirs? Somebody wants cloth and all like that.
What I want to bring back is this feeling. Even
James Brown's funk sound owes a deep gratitude to that feeling,
(43:05):
to those ancient African rhythms, even though James Brown wouldn't
necessarily admit that.
Speaker 14 (43:11):
James Brown famously denied his musical connection to Africa, but
yet he was the one that brought all this equipment
that endangered the lives of others right so that he
could perform in multiple places on the continent. I mean,
I just think that James Brown is such an interesting
place as a sound to think about echoes and the diaspora.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
When James Brown imagined the sound of funk, he put
the emphasis of the beat on the ones. That was
a very African choice.
Speaker 14 (43:44):
The question of the one and the emphasis on the one,
which is also part of a sort of African tradition,
but then also poly rhythms, right, the role of improvisation,
the role of call and response. I'm like, are you
are you sure, mister Brown? You there's no connection here.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Jeffrey Kusama Hinti said he also noticed this theme emerged
from the footage the cameras capture.
Speaker 5 (44:09):
They're an susis of all those musicians were stolen from
their homes and now they're coming back. So there's that
emotional journey, but they're also coming back with the music
that retains some of those kernels, you know, so they
never it's like they never completely left or never left them.
(44:30):
And I think seeing that revelation among some of those
musicians is incredibly powerful.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
While in Zieyar, dancer Lola Love gets interviewed by a
culture magazine aimed at a Latin American audience. In that interview,
she said she'd long been a fan of the Latin
sound she grew up hearing in New York.
Speaker 9 (44:49):
First of all, I'm from New York. I'm from the Bronx.
I grew up in the fifties.
Speaker 7 (44:53):
We were all doing Latin before they called it sausa. Okay,
it was Latin, so you bugaloot and you Latin dance.
Pacheco is a huge star in New York because he's
Dominican and he had that pachanga sound.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Just like she'd remembered it from her girlhood.
Speaker 7 (45:09):
And so when he came on stage with the Find
Your All Stars, the audience went crazy. But it was
until Saya Cruz started singing Juang Dana Nana and everybody
started singing with her like they knew.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
It, which was especially notable because after the fight had
been postponed, most Westerners didn't make the long trip for
just the music festival. So the crowd at Zaire seventy
four is made up mostly of local Zairians.
Speaker 7 (45:38):
And I was like, wow, Denka sing Spanish in Zayre
and the audience that was there were just cheering and
having the best time of the life. I guess they
thought they had died and gone to heaven to hear
all of this amazing music that they recognized.
Speaker 14 (45:56):
There's a lot of like sort of cross cultural transal,
you know, exchange happening, and it moves beyond the US
Black Americans coming home when you bring Cuba into it.
And the FANYA record label all stars that are part
of it.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
As DJ Lenee Denise notes, Celia Cruz is an important
figure at ZAI Year seventy four. She illustrates what often
goes overlooked by both Africans and Black Americans. She is
our Caribbean cousin.
Speaker 14 (46:31):
There is the real interesting work of Celia Cruz being
a dark skinned Cuban woman and folks having to reckon
with what we think we mean when we say Latino.
How we oftentimes because of anti blackness, move away from
Afro Cuban, Afro Latino, Afro Latina. But Celia Cruz is
(46:52):
there to represent like the range in blackness, the sort
of the like multiple forms, or the diasporas within the diaspora.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Day three of the festival would be the biggest one yet.
The music festival was growing and going smoothly, save for
one small problem, seeing as it was the last day
and all they actually ran out of beer.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
The country had one beer, the government's sanctioned beer. Timbo
I think it was called they ran out of beer
the second night we were there.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
When he says the Zayerians ran out of beer, Gary
doesn't mean the stadium and the concert.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
He means there was no more beer. There was the
big joke the country ran out of beer.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Yes, the whole nation of Zaiir ran dry.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
We we're in a country that could run out of beer.
That's not what happens in America. You're not going to
run out of beer. It just made it very clear
to us that this the world was very different in
Zaire than the world that I was accustomed.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
But luckily that didn't stop the music. On this third
and final day, a performer named Big Black takes the
stage and fully wins over the audience. He doesn't sing,
He just plays a drum, the naked appeal of the drum.
Speaker 6 (48:10):
Big Black was a big congo player when he played
those drums. The people have reacted to that just like
he was one of their brothers, you know, and because
we were all brothers at that time, you know. But
we were all learning from each other, and we were
all learning how to teach from the same point that
(48:32):
we were learning from. Then.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
After Big Black, an African afro funk act takes the stage.
The band is called Orchestra Afrisa International and for Zaire
seventy four they feature the singing of Tabu Levy Roscherro,
which the crowd called the Voice of Lightness. The incredible
Showman brought the African crowd to its feet to dance
along with the funk sound of a frisa. Finally, it's
(48:58):
time for the headline. Right about here, ladies and gentlemen,
I want you to get yourself and your soul together.
This man will make your liver quiver. This man will
make your bladder splatter. This man will freeze your knees
(49:21):
if you will, let's all welcome Godfather a Soul. Soul
brother number one James Brown. James Brown outwalks James Brown
in a snug blue bodysuit and a long drape jacket,
But the jacket doesn't stay on long. James Brown yanks
(49:41):
it off to reveal the full glory of his outfit.
It has this deep scoop neck that goes down to
his navel, revealing bear black skin. Yet, somehow, on James Brown,
the tight fitting, low cut body suit seems hyper masculine.
Across his stomach, almost like a championship wrestling belt. Are
(50:02):
the letters GFOS for the Godfather a Soul.
Speaker 9 (50:08):
This was his big comeback.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Comeback from what you might ask.
Speaker 7 (50:13):
This is after he had backed Nixon, and before I
got there, they were actually doing bomb threats because now
he's a Republican and the Blacks were mostly Democrats and
they were not having it.
Speaker 9 (50:25):
But it took the big payback to turn that all around.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
James Brown did win back his listeners. They first gave
him for his foray into politics. Soon enough the crowds
were back at his shows because his music was too good.
Folks had to forgive them.
Speaker 7 (50:44):
We would do a show that was not over till
eleven or twelve, and if it wasn't for the venues
finding him or calling the police, we would probably be.
Speaker 9 (50:53):
Performing till two three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 7 (50:56):
So James Brown got on stage and he was like
the ever ready bunny.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
He just performed over in Zaire. The show certainly didn't
end at two am. In fact, that's just when it
got started.
Speaker 9 (51:08):
We went on at two am in the morning.
Speaker 7 (51:10):
I remember that because we were waiting and waiting and waiting.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
When James Brown steps out on stage and he grabs
hold of the mic, his band immediately goes into the
first number, the Big Payback, and the crowd goes wild.
James Brown lets the mic fall forward right as he
drops low into a split. Then he glides back up,
all muscle and right on time. The mic is there
to meet him. From those first notes, James Brown has
(51:36):
the crowd's full attention, and his backing band, the JBS,
has them up on their feet and dancing.
Speaker 10 (51:44):
He's out there to give them the greatest performance they've
ever seen, to give them an experience, because that's where
he was most a lot.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Photographer Lynn Goldsmith captures the magic of this performance. Her
photos bring you right into the action of mister Dynamite's show.
Like there's this four panel montage she makes of James Brown.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Left to right.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
He holds the mic, the master of the show. The
next panel he's leaned back, but a grin delights on
his lips. The next panel he's bent forward, convulsed by
the hit of the beat. And for the last panel,
he's back at the mic, his face caught mid shriek.
The James Brown experience in four photos, but still you
(52:32):
really had to be there.
Speaker 10 (52:34):
It was always about him just being the best at
what he could do.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
Those same sort of images come to breathing life in
the film Documentary's Soul Power in fact, the documentary gets
its name from the James Brown song which he plays next.
Speaker 5 (52:55):
So James Brown played this amazing set. All the performances
are just so athletic, and the musicality is wonderful and
I just can't imagine how he can do it. Any
one of the songs could have been in the movie,
but of course I needed soul power because that's the cornerstone.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
As the Zayrean crowd dances to that super tight James
Brown sound, Mister Dynamite and his backing band play a
few early hits. They run through the aching try Me,
and then switch gears for the upbeat cold Foot. Then
they get the funk all the way out with the Boss.
(53:35):
But it's when James Brown's band plays a ballad called
Zayre that's when he really wins the crowd's heart. They
go wild cheering when James Brown chants my booto, my booto,
my bootoo over a slow jam. It's punctuated by a
Macio Parker sax solo, and for his finale, James Brown
(53:59):
plays say it loud, I'm Black and I'm proud, and
he makes it a very special version as the JBS
keep that rhythm hitting and Lola Love dances her ass off.
James Brown drops down from the stage and he joins
the crowd. James Brown leads the Zyareans in a sing along.
(54:19):
Crowd members take turns singing into the mic.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
I'm black and.
Speaker 14 (54:23):
I'm proud, I'm blacking, I'm proud.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
It's a poignant moment, one that energizes all those who
are there.
Speaker 9 (54:31):
I wasn't tired when it was four o'clock in the morning.
I wanted to dance the war.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Then James Brown emerges from the crowd. He returns to
the stage where he pulls open his jumpsuit. It's soaked
with sweat. Bare chested now, he waves goodbye to the
crowd as the announcer shouts, James Brown, ladies and gentlemen,
the cod Father's Soul. James Brown, with that the Godfather Soul,
(54:56):
leaves the stage to Rocus applause and rising sun.
Speaker 9 (55:01):
When we finished playing, it was daylight.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
The crowd files out. The African Morning greets them. The
bands have done it. The festival directors can breathe a deep,
satisfying breath of relief. They all gave the people an
incredible show and reconnected cultures across the Atlantic. It's a
true homecoming of the soul. And now what comes next
(55:32):
is a rumble. Oh. On the next episode of Rumble,
the stage is set.
Speaker 6 (55:45):
When I whooped this man, I want to be declared
by all as the greatest of all time.
Speaker 8 (55:51):
Alli was not in favor. Alli wasn't anyone's goat at
that time. Holli was not thought of in the magnificent
way we think of him now.
Speaker 15 (56:00):
At four o'clock in the morning on October thirty, nineteen
seventy four.
Speaker 9 (56:04):
I awaited my fate in the locker room.
Speaker 4 (56:07):
Chuck, now's your chance, show me what you got.
Speaker 17 (56:13):
Rumbell is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
Rumbell is written and hosted by Zaren Burnett. The third
produced and directed by Julia Chriskell. Sound designed by Jesse
Niswanger and scoring by John Washington. Original music composed by
Jordan Manley and TJ. Merritt. Series concept by Gary Stromberg.
(56:33):
Executive producers are Jason English, Sean Titone, Gary Stromberg, Virginia Prescott, L. C. Crowley,
and Brandon barr Our. Senior producer is Amelia Brock, Production
manager Daisy Church Fact checker Savannah Hugley. Legal services provided
by Canoell Hanley PC. Additional production by Claire Keating Casting
(56:55):
director Julia Chriscau. Casting support services provided by Breakdown ex Press.
Episode eleven cast Wayne j as Wally Bean, John Washington
as news reporter, Julia Chriscau as news reporter. If you
like the show, let us know, like subscribe, leave five
star reviews. It really helps. Also check out our show
(57:17):
notes for a full list of reference materials.
If there was such a thing as a time machine,
and Gary Stromberg could step inside this wondrous contraption and
travel back in time to experience just one performance from
the Zaire seventy four concert. Again, which performance would he choose?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Wow, James Brown's the obvious one because of the intense
enthusiasm of the audience, and he really did perform. I mean,
he's the godfather of soul for a reason. Yeah, it
would have to be James Brown.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Gary, who was the music festival's pr man, is still
singing the praises of what he experienced. Really, the entire
festival was something to behold.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
The Crusaders I thought they were great, Spinners were great?
Who else? And find y'all starts were wonderful.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
If you were there, you would easily understand why he
might have trouble picking just one performance. Gary was there.
He knows how incredible the three day concert was, but
he also knows what it took to make sure it
even happened. He knows intimately how unlikely it was that
they could pull it off, but they did. They beat
(01:09):
the odds. Gary and really his friends, the festival directors
Hugh and Stu, pulled it off Zaire. Seventy four was
one of those rare peak moments in world culture and
it all went down in Zaire. So I wondered what
did the locals think about those famous American pop superstars
(01:30):
who'd come all the way to Kinshasa to perform for them.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
While James Brown was obviously the biggest star, they were
very welcoming to all of the talent, both they're African
musicians as well as the American musicians. For them, it
was a really joyous experience as well.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
People overflowed the stadium turnstiles eager to see the American
black performers, but also they were equally, if not more
excited about the African megastars and the Afro carena in performers.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It was a festival seating. The field was open standing
remotely and then the sides of the stadium were filled
up as well with well, I don't think it was
reserve seating. It was just they opened the doors and
let anybody you could sit wherever you wanted to. But
the field was just totally filled with people dancing and
just loving what they were seeing. They were having a
great time.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
With A seventy four with him and Stu was like, Hey,
let's get all the biggest black artists on the planet
on a plane to Africa and do a concert for
this fight.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
I mean, this is a festival above and beyond any
even Woodstock. There'd be albums that there'd be a documentary.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
Just seeing them in the marketplace, seeing them hanging out
in the hotel, seeing them play with one another like that.
Whole that was just a revelation. So you immediately get
the sense that you're in this incredibly special place, and
it was a kind of responsibility that goes with them.
For me personally, some of the greatest musical artists who
ever lived.
Speaker 6 (03:04):
The whole experience of the Zaire Kid Shata was unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
The American side, James Brown is the headliner.
Speaker 7 (03:12):
You had bb King, you had Big Black who was
just so bigger than life. You had the Pointer Sisters,
you had Sister Sledge and they were so sweet and adorable.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Franco and his jazz orchestra, tabou Let and his rumba orchestra,
Johnny Puchecko, Celia Cruz, Ray Barretto, I mean, everybody is there.
Speaker 8 (03:36):
I remember the Spinners, and to me, springtime didn't start
until I could hear could it be on Falling in
Love on the radio. You know, people don't know these
acts now necessarily, but they were huge.
Speaker 9 (03:47):
I was in odd at all the different celebrities that
were there.
Speaker 7 (03:50):
This was my first big concert.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
And then being able to share this energy with like
and sit in the wonder of how excited like everyone
in zaire, all these Africans are that y'all are here.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Welcome to Rumble, the story of Ali Foreman and the
Soul Music of nineteen seventy four. I'm your host, Zarren Burnett,
the IID from iHeart Podcast and School of Humans. This
is Rumble. Previously on Rumble with Lamumba out of the way,
(04:38):
you get Mubutu, who's the.
Speaker 7 (04:40):
Biggest kleptocrat you can imagine, and we do the bidding
of the United States because it lined his pockets there
still getting what they were getting before, but with a
black face in front.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
This was a dictatorship out and out. People were terribly
fearful of this guy.
Speaker 10 (04:56):
All these soldiers come out of nowhere, turn their guns
on mccraft.
Speaker 7 (05:02):
I got to go to the marketplace and meet the
different people.
Speaker 8 (05:06):
George's I ain't cut that bad you saw how fat
he is.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
He's about to lose his title. It's September nineteen seventy
four and Wally Bean, an American press agent, travels to
Kinshasa to cover the music festival. Once he gets situated
the white press agent Bean writes a series of letters
(05:31):
back to the US. Highlights are published reporting on what
all there is to see here, eat and experience in Zaire.
From a syndicated story, Wally Bean reports.
Speaker 11 (05:43):
Thought you would like to know that the James Bond
influence has reached the Old Congo now known as Zaire.
The native self tourists' authentic spears that break down into
three parts they could fit in a suitcase. Despite all
the scare stories that appeared in the American press, Kinshasa,
formerly known as Leopoldville, is proving about as dangerous as
Philadelphia on a Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
To bring his point home, the press agent Waldy Bean
gives an example of the sort of dark hearted and
scurrilous characters that he does have to worry about running
into in Kinshasa. It's mainly a band of ego driven
American writers.
Speaker 11 (06:18):
We're having great fun with his I year seventy four
music concerts, and the only dangerous characters I've met are
George Plimpton and Norman Mahler. George wants to go up
the Congo River in a canoe or some such. Mailer's
in a bad mood because his stomach is upset. Usually
when Mailer gets in a bad mood, he wants to
fight somebody. One night at Hugh Hefner's house, he wanted
to fight Bud Sholberg. Scholberg refused because he once had
(06:40):
refused to fight Ernest Hemingway and he didn't want to
step down in class.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Part of Mahler's irritability was due to the fact that,
as the Asberry Park Press noted in its September twenty
fifth edition from nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 12 (06:54):
The super fight of the Century has been postponed until
late October.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
That's the reason in for Mailer's mood. However, the good
news is for folks other than Norman Mailer.
Speaker 12 (07:05):
But a super cultural festival bringing together Latin American, Afro
American and African dancers and singers will nonetheless get underway
here on Saturday, only one day later than scheduled In
the days.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Before that same Zaire seventy four music festival kicks off.
The streets of kinshasa are a buzz with people. The
city pulses with traffic, the hum of pedestrians, and the
colorful commotion of street business comes alive as the sounds
of the peddlers and the merchants fill the air. There's
a carnivalesque spirit. There's also an ambient, free floating sense
(07:42):
of anticipation, and, as one newsman from the Associated Press
reports from the capital of Zayre, the.
Speaker 13 (07:49):
City of more than one million throbs with music throughout
the night. The parking lot in front of the luxurious
Intercontinental Hotel has been turned into a vast open air
entertainment area, with up to two twenty five dancers performing
at a time. The band plays for hours without stopping,
the musicians taking a breather, one at a time.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
This same writer also relies on the old tropes of
Africa to make sense of it all. To the folks
back home.
Speaker 13 (08:15):
Outsider's fine, the roar of the bulldozer has long since
replaced the roar of the lion.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Here and then he follows that choice metaphor with this observation.
Speaker 13 (08:25):
Visitors are likely to find that instead of crocodiles. The
mighty Congo River running by the city is more likely
to feature water skiers enjoying themselves in the sun. Instead
of a dinner featuring wild gang cooked over a campfire.
Most visitors enjoy meat and foul flown in from other
areas with the bottle of houdon Cade or some other
French wine.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
You hear it right, Lions, crocodiles, bush beat and the
Congo River versus the water skiers, bulldozers and French wine.
This ap writer wants his readers to know civilization and
modernity have finally arrived in the dark heart of Africa.
That's the subtext, and in case you weren't sure, that
was the point. The writer makes his intent inescapable when
(09:08):
he writes.
Speaker 13 (09:09):
The Africa of the Tarzan movies does not exist in
some parts of this vast country about the size of
the western United States. In one area, there's a tribe
of pygmies that still live in the trees to protect
themselves from the animals. There is relatively little tourist business
in Zaire at present, but a steady stream of businessmen
involved in the mining industries gold, silver, copper keep the
(09:33):
hotels filled.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
In other words, before the Zaire seventy four festival and
the Rumble in the Jungle, most of the pale faced
folks who traveled to Zaire came to take advantage of
the postcolonial nation. Primarily, they came from the extractive industries
who helped put Mabutu in power. They were after gold, silver, copper,
(09:55):
box site. And now Mabutu wants his nation to become
a new plague for the white and wealthy, like Kenya
was for the Brits at the time. And Mabutu knows
the best way to draw the westerners in is with
some black culture. Thus the three day concert and heavyweight
title fight that sold as a global celebration of blackness,
(10:18):
a spectacle that would be, as Don King might say,
the lux the world has never seen before. But this
moment is about more than that. It's really a celebration
of the African diaspora. It's a homecoming for a far
flung family, one still loosely connected by blackness and the
bonds of culture. As the billboards standing tall over kinshasa proclaim,
(10:43):
welcome to the land of your ancestors. This moment marks
a reconnection of those family bonds, the ones that were
intentionally severed by the Transatlantic slave trade. Yet those bonds
could not be fully broken, and the sound of the
drum is proof of that. Back to the Asberry Park
(11:04):
Press and their reports.
Speaker 13 (11:06):
The main beat up the Zaiyir Festival, already being drummed
in the streets of Conshata this past week is the
calypso Zayiyan that African slaves took from the country last
century to the New World, where it still flourishes, particularly
in the Caribbean and Latin America.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
The rhythms of the drum are all the evidence one
needs to know the family has come home. In the theater,
there's an age old maxim the show must go on.
Boxing promoter Don King lived by that same logic.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
When George Foreman gets cut in training, the music festival
has to go on.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
As Lewis Ehrenberg, author of the book Rumble in the Jungle, recounts,
it just isn't possible to reschedule the entire event. The
reason for that was simple. It came down to three words,
schedules and contracts.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
All these artists have other commitments. They can't hang around
for another five weeks to see if Horman the cut
will heal.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Which means the fight promoters and festival directors must make
a difficult decision the three day Music Festival Zaire seventy four.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
But gets separated from the fight and any interest tourists coming,
flight fans around the globe. I mean that just burns out,
That doesn't really happen in a major way, and it
kills much of the festival itself.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
The whole point of having Muhammad Ali and George Foreman
come to Zaiir for the rumble in the jungle, and
then the rationale for adding the three day music festival
was the guarantee that the eyes and the ears of
the world would be on Zayir. Now Mabutu has invested
roughly twenty million dollars for this global advertisement of his
(12:49):
power and the prestige of his nation, and it's all
coming undone. It risks becoming an absolute failure on the
world stage. But then, if you'll remember, Howard Cosell agrees
not to break the news of Foremans cut during Monday
night football, so the musicians then get on the plane
and all fly over to Zaire. Anyway, a lie saves
(13:12):
the day. Or maybe the temporary omission of the truth
saves the day. Either way, there is no way on
God's green earth that James Brown would have flown to
Zaire if he had known the truth. And no James Brown,
no show, this move true Dambutu and Don King saves
the day. Now the musicians are in Zaire and the
(13:33):
show goes on. Zaire seventy four brought black music and
black voices from both Africa and America to the stage,
and that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 14 (13:46):
I'm thinking about the longstanding relationship that black folks in
America in particular have had with the notion and the
concept and the performance and the expression of what we
call song, and how songs have been a channel for
us to kind of focus center, reclaim, recoup our humanity.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
That's Lenae Denise.
Speaker 14 (14:12):
I am known. Maybe perhaps in the broader world is
DJ lene Denise.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Being a music scholar. DJ Lenee Denise thinks a lot
about the history and theory and the meaning of music
and culture, like, for example, W. E.
Speaker 14 (14:28):
Du Boyce's notion of sorrow songs and him thinking about
the old Negro spiritual as a place of refuge but
also as a sort of cluoded speak, and perhaps the
roots of what he refers to as double consciousness right
is that we have never had really the luxury, following
(14:49):
the enslavement of folks to kind of have a non
political relationship with music.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
There is one inescapable reality of racism for black people.
Each of us is representative of all black people. Thus,
everything that a black artist creates or puts out into
the world can be treated as social commentary and can
also be treated as commentary on the ever evolving notion
of blackness. The thing is, Black America is aware that
(15:19):
the world is always listening to us. This dates back
to the days of enslavement. Thus, anything a Black American
says in public is coded for our safety. There is
what we can say amongst each other, and it is
not the same as what we can say in our
artwork or in our speeches, in our books, in poetry,
or even in our interviews in foreign countries. This awareness,
(15:40):
this shared self consciousness of our double existence as a
person and as a black person, perhaps can most easily
be felt by others in our music.
Speaker 14 (15:50):
That isn't to say that every time we touch a
song it's political, but I think that ultimately given the
conditions under which we find ourselves as descendants of folks
who are in slaved. Music is a political force.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Music has always been a part of black social movements,
even going back to folk songs and the blues and
vaudeville their social commentary in all of it. In the
mid twentieth century America that became more intentional. Music became
more distinctly political.
Speaker 14 (16:20):
The nineteen fifties gospel movement that was absolutely fueled by politics.
When you consider the fact that Martin Luther King would travel,
you know, many times to Detroit to be in conversation
with Arita Franklin's father, CEO Franklin, fundraising, and so that
golden age of gospel is overlooked as being a real
(16:42):
important Black musical grounding moment when you think about folks
like Sam Cook, who was politically astute and also encouraging
black folks to own their own labels as an extension
of political activism and the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
The sixties saw on you mental anthems from the likes
of Sam Cook, Nina Simone, the Staples singers. Their music
often described the struggle or bolstered the movements for change
then in nineteen sixty eight, James Brown dropped any pretext
or coy poetic metaphor. He decided, in his inimitable James
(17:20):
Brown way, to just say it with his chest when
he drops this new black national anthem for the streets.
As you may recall, there was his era defining song
say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud. That song
shook up the world. It became the soundtrack for the
long hot summers of the late sixties, and suddenly all
(17:42):
sorts of other performers, athletes, Hollywood stars, they were all
saying the same thing. In the world of sports. This
new wave of Black pride was of course, led by
the ever defiant Muhammad al Li. These musicians, they're documenting
all of this in song and presenting it on stage
in Zaire.
Speaker 14 (18:03):
Our stories are coming through the lyrics, are coming through
lived experience, or coming through the rhythms.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
At the Festival Zaire seventy four, those rhythms reunite this
separated family, the music and the heritage of the Black
diaspora now home again in Africa. In the final days
before the shows began, the bands and the superstar performers
(18:30):
spend their days in rehearsal we.
Speaker 9 (18:32):
Were on stage.
Speaker 7 (18:33):
We had to rehearse because Fred Wesley would rehearse the
band and the dancers had to be there for the
whole thing to make sure that we knew what the
rundown of the show was going to be. And we
had a choreograph to that.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
That's Low of Love Dancer for James Brown, and she
recalls how.
Speaker 7 (18:49):
So when we were there in the daytime, you saw
all the different people who were like claiming the tallest
polls to hang those amps and those speakers. Because the sound,
I was like, this is going to be like something
that from out of space.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
When they weren't rehearsing, the stars and performers enjoyed the
day's sightseeing in Zaire. Thanks to the documentary film Creves,
those rare moments are captured for posterity.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
These revelations are like when they're in the market, particularly
it's Fanya, but it was the rest of them, like
interacting to people or playing the music like they just
felt electrified being around folks that had such wonderful energy.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And that's Jeffrey Kusama Hinti, editor of the Fight film
When We Were Kings and director of the music festival
film Soul Power, both of which focus on the days
of Zaire seventy four and the Rumble in the Jungle.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
I don't think anybody knew who the spinners were in
Zayre or not many any people knew who James Brown was,
and yet there was this kind of connection that was formed.
I think particularly the artists felt that, you know, carry
them along, and I really believe that it's some of
their best recordings. I mean, if you listen to the recordings,
the energy and the passion, it was just truly phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Zay Year seventy four began as the dream and creation
of two men, Hugh Masekela and Stuart Levine, and Hugh
Masekela's son Selemma remembers how his father, Hugh.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Was so excited and it brought him so much joy
to know that, like, if I can get James and
Bill and all these folks, if I can let the
continent touch them in this way, then when they get
back home, they're going to be tell everybody like Yo,
Africa's popping.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Finally, after years of dreaming and months of working their
asses off, the moment has finally arrived and as the
show kicks off, their plans and hopes seem to be
coming true.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Then you see that in the experiences, in the wide
eyed discovery that all of those musicians and artists have,
and then being able to like share this energy with
like and sit in the wonder of how excited like
everyone in Zaire and all these Africans are that y'all
are here. And that was really his question. It was
things like that that gave his soul Pete.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
On Sunday, September twenty second, nineteen seventy four, the doors
to the Arena Stadium in kinshasa finally swing open and
let in the crowd. The opening night is filled with
all the promise of the festival. The bands, who rehearsed
for days are backstage ready, yet also a little nervous
to perform. Some gather in small circles. They make jokes
(21:33):
to break up the tension and alleviate the jitters. The
festival directors stalk the hallways there for any last minute
hiccups or emergencies, but they have to be feeling proud
of their accomplishment. They've done it. The show will go
on with some of the biggest names in music taking
the stage, the speakers blasting, and a buzz among those
(21:55):
locals and attendance. The vibe inside the eighty thousand seat
stadium is truly a special moment in time. The first
act to take the stage for the opening night is
the American group The Spinners.
Speaker 7 (22:12):
I remember The Spinners were on and I was in
the wings watching.
Speaker 9 (22:16):
The show because I'm finally getting to see the show again.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
That's James Brown's dancer, Lola Love, and.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
The manager tells me to run out there and grab
Filipe Win and hug him.
Speaker 9 (22:26):
I said, I'm.
Speaker 7 (22:28):
Sorry, I can't do that. If I would have did that,
James Brown would have fired me. Okay, No, I could
not go out there.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Her fear of her boss, James Brown, overcomes the fact
that she desperately wants to go out there on stage.
Speaker 9 (22:41):
Like I was a crazy person or crazy about the Spinners.
They're amazing, but I would never do that, not with
James Brown. They were amazing though.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
After the Spinners leave the stage, they're followed by a
Zayiian group called tp Okay Jazz. They invite Franco a
zayiretar and a consultant for Zaire seventy four to join
them on stage. The Zayirean pop group plays off kilter
jazzy dance music. It's an eleven song set. It features
(23:12):
a guitar player, Franco, and that's an interesting choice. Earlier
he was an advocate for Mabutu and his campaign of authenticity,
but more recently he's come out as a critic of
the Mabutu regime. However, on this night, Franco and Tpok
Jazz just focus on the music and the crowd and
the rhythm. With Franco on guitar. The band's seven piece
(23:35):
brass section is backed by super tight drums. The lead
singer among the front line of singers is a Zayirean
musician named Sam Mangwana. He's the son of an Angolan
mother and a Zimbabwean father, and he's a captivating presence
on stage. After the sunshiny pop sound in the full
(23:57):
stage of Franco and Tpok Jazz, the next act is
an American folk singer. It's just him and his guitar,
but that's all he needs. If anyone can command the
stage alone, it's Bill Withers.
Speaker 9 (24:13):
He was so soulful with that guitar and his voice.
Speaker 7 (24:17):
The voice became an instrument and it was just so
mesmerizing and soulful.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
As Bill Withers strums on his guitar, the mostly African
audience is drawn into his performance, even if they can't
understand his English language lyrics. As James Brown bandleader Fred
Wesley recalls.
Speaker 6 (24:36):
Bill Withers, he didn't need a band, He didn't need anything.
He was just as dynamic as everybody else with a
whole band. You know, it's better had the whole band
over there, and Dave Brown had his whole band, BBK
had his bad but Bill waded by himself just trumped
all of them. It was so amade at how he
could sing and the sound was perfect. Everything was perfect
(24:59):
about his before.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And for Fred, it was there in that stadium in Conshase.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
That's when I realized who Bill Woodles was. I mean,
he could really sing and he could really play the guitar.
You know, it was magical.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
When Bill Withers breaks into song, the stadium grows quiet.
The entire crowd is united in rapt silence as they
listened to Bill strum and sing his heart out for them.
Not dissimilar to Miriam Mkiba, Bill Withers leaves it all
on the stage.
Speaker 6 (25:33):
This song he did in Africa by himself with a
guitar was another song, Ain't No Sometimes that's good, but
it's a shame. I can't remember the name of the song,
but he thinkured it was the highlight of the whole festival.
Speaker 10 (25:46):
You know.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
The song was Hope She'll be Happier. It features his
overly simple guitar picking that allows the melody to hit
you square in the gut. Sweat pours down his face
as he sings. Maybe the darkness of the hour makes
me seem lonelier than I am. Over the darkness, I
(26:08):
have no power. Hope She'll be happier With him, it
was perfect.
Speaker 6 (26:13):
It was perfectly in tune and his performance it'll make
you cray. I mean, he was so good.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Thinking back on Bill Withers' performance, Gary is just as effusive.
Speaker 13 (26:24):
Well.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I love Bill Willers. He was a client of mine.
There were a couple people that I had gotten for
the festival, Withers being one of them. Bill Withers is
just an incredible guy with an amazing backstory.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Bill Withers came from truly humble beginnings. He worked installing
restrooms in seven forty sevens and was an unlikely star.
Not to mention, he also faced a different challenge.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Bill Withers was a stutterer.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
However, he was able to overcome that when he was
on stage.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
He never stuttered when he sang, but he stuttered at
all other times. So he had a terror time communicating.
And when I got him as a client, he just
didn't think he could do this, because he could, he stuttered,
and so it took a long time before he had
got the confidence to meet the press and deal with them.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Despite his self doubts and his reluctance, Bill Withers pressed on,
which led him to this stage in Zaire in nineteen
seventy four.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
And he was an incredible artist, you know, a very
sensitive guy, but he just needed to get the kind
of confidence. When I first had him, he just couldn't
do interviews. But as he became successful, he started to
open up and it was wonderful.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
However, it wasn't the fame and the love and the
adulation that gave Bill Withers the confidence to blossom.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Instead, Gary believes music was what allowed him to open
up to the world.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Unlike many of the other American musicians who'd take the stage.
Bill Withers had already traveled the world. He'd spent nine
years in the US Navy. He'd already been to Africa.
Thus he looks out at Mabutu Zayir with more educated eyes.
As The New York Times reports, Bill Withers says that
he quote felt like a very privileged person in an
(28:12):
unprivileged setting. But while he's up there on the stage
at Zayre seventy four, Bill Withers discovers he has this
sense of the audience that feels wholly new to him.
As he later tells The New York Times, quote, it
was interesting to watch the reaction of the mostly African audience.
It's like standing on the other side of the street
(28:33):
watching your girlfriend walk down it and seeing how other
people react to her. Throughout the three day music festival,
the American and African artist take turns on stage, and
soon enough, out on stage comes the woman known as
Mama Africa, Miriam Makiba.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
Oh, Miriam Jesus otherworldly.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
That's how Jeffrey Kusama Hinti remembers Makiba's performing. It's in Zayir.
It's like Selema Masechela said about witnessing.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Her, she gave it all, Like every breath, every piece
of her chest and heart, she gave it all.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
When she graces the stage in Zayir, the South African exile,
is demonstrably overjoyed to be performing before an African crowd again.
She's draped in a stunning dress. Her look is capped
off with an eye arresting hairdoo of the Fula tradition.
She wears multi colored beads that look like balls suspended
(29:36):
in the braids that decorate her head. Makiba introduces herself,
telling the audience her full name, Zenzile Makiba guagshu Enguvama,
and she wins a laugh from the crowd when she
makes fun of how Westerners like me can't pronounce her
name correctly. To the thrill of the audience, Mikiba sings
her songs the South African anthem I'm a Pondo, as
(30:00):
well as her international hit the Click Song. This is
another playful jab at westerners like me. By the way,
it's called the click song because Westerners can't pronounce the
real name of the song. Next, she sings her song
unk Ko Kozo. This is followed by a ballad, a
song that her daughter Bongi wrote. The song is called
(30:21):
west Wind. In a break in her performance, Mikiba speaks
to the mostly Zayarean crowd and then she sings a
song in Lingala in praise and honor of their dictatorial leader, Mabutu.
It's a strange thing for the internationally savvy musician to do.
Perhaps she's doing it for their safety, for the safety
(30:41):
of the crowd, or perhaps she sang it as a
way to allow her to sing for the African people
and connect them to themselves despite Mabutu. We do not know.
What we do know is that Miriam knew well what
she stood for and as an artist and as a symbol,
she'd been acting as a musical ambassador ever since she
(31:02):
first came to the United States and was lifted up
by Harry Belafonte. To provide some context for that and
to reflect on Miriam's impact, here again is the artist
in black music. Historian DJ Scholarship, I think, on.
Speaker 14 (31:16):
Top of Mariam Makayba landing in the US and introducing
a US audience to I'm going to say this in
quotes to African music, because I'm not sure that once
the music got there, people were super invested in understanding
distinction between countries, right, I think that they thought of
her as this kind of novelty African woman who clicked
(31:38):
with her mouth.
Speaker 12 (31:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
In other words, most Americans and folks in the West
never saw Miriam coming, which meant they would underestimate her. Meanwhile,
here's this.
Speaker 14 (31:49):
Woman who was well versed in African politics and oftentimes
invited back to the continent, representing South Africa and her
political struggle in exile in front of the UN right,
which again, does it fit in the narrative that we
have her as this African woman who was saved from
her country.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
If anything, with each song she sang, she'd come to
help bring Black Americans back home because with Miriam Mikiba,
as my pops would.
Speaker 15 (32:15):
Tell me, you could fill a kindred nature to Miriam
Mkiva's music. Next, she wasn't singing against anybody. She was
singing four all the Africans who have been spread around
the world and have been separated from themselves. She was saying, no,
we know where you are, we haven't lost track of you,
and we all hi together on this Earth. No matter
(32:39):
how this shit happened, here we are and so you
felt more connected to Africa with her than anybody else.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
On day two of Zire seventy four, things change noticeably.
For the first night, the size of the crowd is
somewhat underwhelming.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
This was a three day festival and we were hopeful
of selling out the three days. But so the first
night of the festival that almost nobody was there and
we were stunned. How did that happen? Why we thought
it was really going well.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
But the truth was, on that first night the eighty
thousand seat stadium was barely half full.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Why turns out Mabutu had not signed off on it,
had not given permission to attend the festival, and people
wouldn't go unless they got permissioned from Mabutu.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Based on what we just heard last episode, you can
understand well why the Zayirean crowd wouldn't want to cross Mabutu.
For Zai Year seventy four. To be any kind of success,
someone would need to go and speak with the dictator
and get Mabuutu's blessing.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Someone from our on our side got to him that
day and explained to him what had happened.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
It turned out to be a harmless oversight. You see,
the dictator didn't realize no one would show up unless
he told his people that it was okay. He didn't
fully realize how scared of him they were. Guess he'd
done a better job than even he was aware. Thus
all the empty seats. But that was easy enough to fix.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And the next day he came out in the media
or whatever however he communicated to his people he thought
they should go.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Bet you can guess what happens next, and the.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Place was sold out the next two days. It was
magical to see nobody's showing up to selling out in
two days.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
On the second day, BB King performs, the African crowd
is thrilled to hear the world famous American bluesman strum
on his guitar Lucille.
Speaker 5 (34:39):
One of the things I've just sent shivers up my
spine is I remember, there's a shot which must be
in sole power of BB King playing and literally it's
like you're rack focusing the perspiration across his face down
his guitar, and just like that intimacy which they so captured.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
That's what Jeffrey Kusama hin, he remembers from the footage.
He also was taken by how.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
That intimacy is also related to the intensity of the performance.
So I think you're really getting a deep insight into
the genius of these artists just so unique.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
BB King plays a few of his big blues hits,
his guitars ache singing out into the crowd. When BB
King picks out the familiar tune of the thrill Is Gone,
the Zyirean crowd dances in time, their joyful faces glow
under the stadium lights.
Speaker 15 (35:33):
BBA is going to do bb King songs and people
admired that about him. He had to hit your thrill
Is Gone, which made the top of all the charts.
So now it's like Willie Nelson doing Stardust. All of
a sudden, everybody knows about him, you know. And he
was humble and he took no shit, which is a
(35:53):
hell of a combination to be humble and take no shit.
So people loved him, you know. He helped introduce a
lot of people to being open to different musicians, not
even to a genre, but just to musicians.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Fellow graduate of the Chiplin Circuit, Fred Wesley, was friends
with b. B. King before they arrived in Africa. Over there, though,
Fred is struck by how BB King he felt empowered.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
He just took on another aura and anxiety. He became
BB King.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
You know what exactly does that mean? To become BB King?
Speaker 6 (36:30):
I mean a blues artist came to Africa and he
saw how the Africa music and the blues music came together.
And I can't explain how how he took on a
bigger aura from himself. You know, in Africa, who got
B be King one of the artists, But he became
BB King, the baster of the blues.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
The effect that his African homecoming had on the old
Delta blues man, It's like a revelation for King.
Speaker 6 (37:00):
He talked to me like that too, you know, like yes,
I think we should do a special show. And it
was strange how he took um.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
In fact, I guess we all did.
Speaker 6 (37:10):
We all kind of did, but bb really got to
be the star of the show there. B. B.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
King's daughter Shirley King, also remembers how much the trip
to Zaire meant to her father and how it helped
him reframe his sense of himself.
Speaker 16 (37:26):
Sometime, as blues artists, we don't think that our music
mean as much as his child and everything. But my
father started appreciating himself, He started appreciating who he was,
and he started appreciating the history of Africa. And he
told me, if I ever had a chance or got
a chance to go over there, please do it.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
The trip to zi Ear changed BB King.
Speaker 16 (37:50):
It was more about my father really loving what Africa
was about and what it did to his spirits. I
think it really made it odd And.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
When BB King returned home he shared his memories of
Zayir with his daughter.
Speaker 16 (38:06):
When he was start talking about it, I could almost
see tears building up in his eyes. That's how much
he truly enjoyed going over there and you know, doing
this thing, and then the fact of what they were
doing it for. You know, he felt honored to be
a part of some next great.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
After BB King, the Pembe Dance Troup takes the stage.
It's another African act. The dance troupe is massive. There
are three hundred members of the ensemble that take the
stage at one point or another. It's an incredible feast
for the eyes. The dance troup. It wears colorful, exaggerated
animal inspired costumes as they engage in Zayrean ceremonial dance.
(38:50):
There are so many dancers on stage that at one
point the hastily constructed stage nearly collapses, but it doesn't
after that. It's an another American act, the Pointer Sisters.
Despite their eye catching costumes, the Zayirean audience doesn't know
what to make of the sister act. As photographer Lynn
(39:11):
Goldsmith recalls.
Speaker 10 (39:13):
When they saw the Pointer Sisters, I think they were
dumbfound like why are these women dressed like this? Why
what are those songs? They were like, oh yeah, And
the Pointer Sisters were a huge American act, big in
Europe too, but no in Africa.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Bomb Overna not there himself. Jeffrey Kasama Hinti witnesses the
same thing in the footage from Zayere seventy four.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
The Pointer Sisters. Their performance was very peculiar, The songs
were odd, they had this kind of carnivalesque costuming and
it was just a really it was an interesting, I
don't know what kind of performance.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
It was.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
The same thing happens with another American act, Sister Sledge.
Speaker 5 (39:55):
We have them in the rehearsal, which I just love
that scene. I mean they're like teenagers. They're young and
they're just having to blast. But their performance in the
concert was it didn't foreground what they were able to do,
and I just felt it wouldn't be fair to put
it in.
Speaker 10 (40:12):
It was pretty weird how unresponsive that many people were
to so many artists who all came out there to
give their best. It was kind of like, what's going
on here?
Speaker 6 (40:27):
You know?
Speaker 10 (40:28):
It wasn't their kind of music. It was like just
not African.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
But the mood changes again when another queen takes the stage.
When Celia Cruz graces the boards in Zayir, she's dressed
in a dazzling array of colors, her makeup on point,
her hair pulled back into a tight bun. Her stage
presence is compared to a peacock of song, and for
(40:54):
good reason. The Latin sounds of the Caribbean acts from
Cuba and Puerto Rico, represented by Cruz, Johnny Pacheco and
the Fania All Stars, are an instant hit with the
African audience. The performers in crowd connect through the drums,
through dancing. Because the body never lies, these driving rhythms
feel the same as when the more familiar African acts
(41:18):
take the stage. The music contains something recognizable back to
DJ Lenee Denise, the new eu.
Speaker 14 (41:26):
Rikan sound that is rooted in the kungas and the
bungo drums. There's this very deep and long standing musical
connection between the you know, the congo and Cuba, right,
So folks are coming home.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
The Afro Cuban sound, the Puerto Rican polyrhythmic beats, the
congas and bongos, it is all unmistakably African in origin.
This feeling of recognition pulses through the crowd. The drums
pound in time with the people's shared heartbeat.
Speaker 14 (41:57):
I think that people were able to identify each other
in the drum and the sounds and even the wallah guitar.
Because what's important here is, yes, this kind of homecoming
to the continent, but equally important is people from the
US hearing these contemporary African musicians and hearing themselves in it.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Bill Withers, for one, recognizes this connection while he is
in Zaire. In a moment captured by the documentary film
Cruise Cameras, Bill Withers says, to be be king quote,
so what we're coming back here with is what we
left here with plus the influences we picked up from
living where we live for the last three four hundred years.
(42:40):
So we've evolved in one corner, they've evolved in the
other corner. And now we're gonna come back. We're all
gonna listen to each other. Somebody asked me, what are
you going to bring back? Are you going to bring
back any souvenirs? Somebody wants cloth and all like that.
What I want to bring back is this feeling. Even
James Brown's funk sound owes a deep gratitude to that feeling,
(43:05):
to those ancient African rhythms, even though James Brown wouldn't
necessarily admit that.
Speaker 14 (43:11):
James Brown famously denied his musical connection to Africa, but
yet he was the one that brought all this equipment
that endangered the lives of others right so that he
could perform in multiple places on the continent. I mean,
I just think that James Brown is such an interesting
place as a sound to think about echoes and the diaspora.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
When James Brown imagined the sound of funk, he put
the emphasis of the beat on the ones. That was
a very African choice.
Speaker 14 (43:44):
The question of the one and the emphasis on the one,
which is also part of a sort of African tradition,
but then also poly rhythms, right, the role of improvisation,
the role of call and response. I'm like, are you
are you sure, mister Brown? You there's no connection here.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Jeffrey Kusama Hinti said he also noticed this theme emerged
from the footage the cameras capture.
Speaker 5 (44:09):
They're an susis of all those musicians were stolen from
their homes and now they're coming back. So there's that
emotional journey, but they're also coming back with the music
that retains some of those kernels, you know, so they
never it's like they never completely left or never left them.
(44:30):
And I think seeing that revelation among some of those
musicians is incredibly powerful.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
While in Zieyar, dancer Lola Love gets interviewed by a
culture magazine aimed at a Latin American audience. In that interview,
she said she'd long been a fan of the Latin
sound she grew up hearing in New York.
Speaker 9 (44:49):
First of all, I'm from New York. I'm from the Bronx.
I grew up in the fifties.
Speaker 7 (44:53):
We were all doing Latin before they called it sausa. Okay,
it was Latin, so you bugaloot and you Latin dance.
Pacheco is a huge star in New York because he's
Dominican and he had that pachanga sound.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Just like she'd remembered it from her girlhood.
Speaker 7 (45:09):
And so when he came on stage with the Find
Your All Stars, the audience went crazy. But it was
until Saya Cruz started singing Juang Dana Nana and everybody
started singing with her like they knew.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
It, which was especially notable because after the fight had
been postponed, most Westerners didn't make the long trip for
just the music festival. So the crowd at Zaire seventy
four is made up mostly of local Zairians.
Speaker 7 (45:38):
And I was like, wow, Denka sing Spanish in Zayre
and the audience that was there were just cheering and
having the best time of the life. I guess they
thought they had died and gone to heaven to hear
all of this amazing music that they recognized.
Speaker 14 (45:56):
There's a lot of like sort of cross cultural transal,
you know, exchange happening, and it moves beyond the US
Black Americans coming home when you bring Cuba into it.
And the FANYA record label all stars that are part
of it.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
As DJ Lenee Denise notes, Celia Cruz is an important
figure at ZAI Year seventy four. She illustrates what often
goes overlooked by both Africans and Black Americans. She is
our Caribbean cousin.
Speaker 14 (46:31):
There is the real interesting work of Celia Cruz being
a dark skinned Cuban woman and folks having to reckon
with what we think we mean when we say Latino.
How we oftentimes because of anti blackness, move away from
Afro Cuban, Afro Latino, Afro Latina. But Celia Cruz is
(46:52):
there to represent like the range in blackness, the sort
of the like multiple forms, or the diasporas within the diaspora.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Day three of the festival would be the biggest one yet.
The music festival was growing and going smoothly, save for
one small problem, seeing as it was the last day
and all they actually ran out of beer.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
The country had one beer, the government's sanctioned beer. Timbo
I think it was called they ran out of beer
the second night we were there.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
When he says the Zayerians ran out of beer, Gary
doesn't mean the stadium and the concert.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
He means there was no more beer. There was the
big joke the country ran out of beer.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Yes, the whole nation of Zaiir ran dry.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
We we're in a country that could run out of beer.
That's not what happens in America. You're not going to
run out of beer. It just made it very clear
to us that this the world was very different in
Zaire than the world that I was accustomed.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
But luckily that didn't stop the music. On this third
and final day, a performer named Big Black takes the
stage and fully wins over the audience. He doesn't sing,
He just plays a drum, the naked appeal of the drum.
Speaker 6 (48:10):
Big Black was a big congo player when he played
those drums. The people have reacted to that just like
he was one of their brothers, you know, and because
we were all brothers at that time, you know. But
we were all learning from each other, and we were
all learning how to teach from the same point that
(48:32):
we were learning from. Then.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
After Big Black, an African afro funk act takes the stage.
The band is called Orchestra Afrisa International and for Zaire
seventy four they feature the singing of Tabu Levy Roscherro,
which the crowd called the Voice of Lightness. The incredible
Showman brought the African crowd to its feet to dance
along with the funk sound of a frisa. Finally, it's
(48:58):
time for the headline. Right about here, ladies and gentlemen,
I want you to get yourself and your soul together.
This man will make your liver quiver. This man will
make your bladder splatter. This man will freeze your knees
(49:21):
if you will, let's all welcome Godfather a Soul. Soul
brother number one James Brown. James Brown outwalks James Brown
in a snug blue bodysuit and a long drape jacket,
But the jacket doesn't stay on long. James Brown yanks
(49:41):
it off to reveal the full glory of his outfit.
It has this deep scoop neck that goes down to
his navel, revealing bear black skin. Yet, somehow, on James Brown,
the tight fitting, low cut body suit seems hyper masculine.
Across his stomach, almost like a championship wrestling belt. Are
(50:02):
the letters GFOS for the Godfather a Soul.
Speaker 9 (50:08):
This was his big comeback.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Comeback from what you might ask.
Speaker 7 (50:13):
This is after he had backed Nixon, and before I
got there, they were actually doing bomb threats because now
he's a Republican and the Blacks were mostly Democrats and
they were not having it.
Speaker 9 (50:25):
But it took the big payback to turn that all around.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
James Brown did win back his listeners. They first gave
him for his foray into politics. Soon enough the crowds
were back at his shows because his music was too good.
Folks had to forgive them.
Speaker 7 (50:44):
We would do a show that was not over till
eleven or twelve, and if it wasn't for the venues
finding him or calling the police, we would probably be.
Speaker 9 (50:53):
Performing till two three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 7 (50:56):
So James Brown got on stage and he was like
the ever ready bunny.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
He just performed over in Zaire. The show certainly didn't
end at two am. In fact, that's just when it
got started.
Speaker 9 (51:08):
We went on at two am in the morning.
Speaker 7 (51:10):
I remember that because we were waiting and waiting and waiting.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
When James Brown steps out on stage and he grabs
hold of the mic, his band immediately goes into the
first number, the Big Payback, and the crowd goes wild.
James Brown lets the mic fall forward right as he
drops low into a split. Then he glides back up,
all muscle and right on time. The mic is there
to meet him. From those first notes, James Brown has
(51:36):
the crowd's full attention, and his backing band, the JBS,
has them up on their feet and dancing.
Speaker 10 (51:44):
He's out there to give them the greatest performance they've
ever seen, to give them an experience, because that's where
he was most a lot.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Photographer Lynn Goldsmith captures the magic of this performance. Her
photos bring you right into the action of mister Dynamite's show.
Like there's this four panel montage she makes of James Brown.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Left to right.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
He holds the mic, the master of the show. The
next panel he's leaned back, but a grin delights on
his lips. The next panel he's bent forward, convulsed by
the hit of the beat. And for the last panel,
he's back at the mic, his face caught mid shriek.
The James Brown experience in four photos, but still you
(52:32):
really had to be there.
Speaker 10 (52:34):
It was always about him just being the best at
what he could do.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
Those same sort of images come to breathing life in
the film Documentary's Soul Power in fact, the documentary gets
its name from the James Brown song which he plays next.
Speaker 5 (52:55):
So James Brown played this amazing set. All the performances
are just so athletic, and the musicality is wonderful and
I just can't imagine how he can do it. Any
one of the songs could have been in the movie,
but of course I needed soul power because that's the cornerstone.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
As the Zayrean crowd dances to that super tight James
Brown sound, Mister Dynamite and his backing band play a
few early hits. They run through the aching try Me,
and then switch gears for the upbeat cold Foot. Then
they get the funk all the way out with the Boss.
(53:35):
But it's when James Brown's band plays a ballad called
Zayre that's when he really wins the crowd's heart. They
go wild cheering when James Brown chants my booto, my booto,
my bootoo over a slow jam. It's punctuated by a
Macio Parker sax solo, and for his finale, James Brown
(53:59):
plays say it loud, I'm Black and I'm proud, and
he makes it a very special version as the JBS
keep that rhythm hitting and Lola Love dances her ass off.
James Brown drops down from the stage and he joins
the crowd. James Brown leads the Zyareans in a sing along.
(54:19):
Crowd members take turns singing into the mic.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
I'm black and.
Speaker 14 (54:23):
I'm proud, I'm blacking, I'm proud.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
It's a poignant moment, one that energizes all those who
are there.
Speaker 9 (54:31):
I wasn't tired when it was four o'clock in the morning.
I wanted to dance the war.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Then James Brown emerges from the crowd. He returns to
the stage where he pulls open his jumpsuit. It's soaked
with sweat. Bare chested now, he waves goodbye to the
crowd as the announcer shouts, James Brown, ladies and gentlemen,
the cod Father's Soul. James Brown, with that the Godfather Soul,
(54:56):
leaves the stage to Rocus applause and rising sun.
Speaker 9 (55:01):
When we finished playing, it was daylight.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
The crowd files out. The African Morning greets them. The
bands have done it. The festival directors can breathe a deep,
satisfying breath of relief. They all gave the people an
incredible show and reconnected cultures across the Atlantic. It's a
true homecoming of the soul. And now what comes next
(55:32):
is a rumble. Oh. On the next episode of Rumble,
the stage is set.
Speaker 6 (55:45):
When I whooped this man, I want to be declared
by all as the greatest of all time.
Speaker 8 (55:51):
Alli was not in favor. Alli wasn't anyone's goat at
that time. Holli was not thought of in the magnificent
way we think of him now.
Speaker 15 (56:00):
At four o'clock in the morning on October thirty, nineteen
seventy four.
Speaker 9 (56:04):
I awaited my fate in the locker room.
Speaker 4 (56:07):
Chuck, now's your chance, show me what you got.
Speaker 17 (56:13):
Rumbell is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
Rumbell is written and hosted by Zaren Burnett. The third
produced and directed by Julia Chriskell. Sound designed by Jesse
Niswanger and scoring by John Washington. Original music composed by
Jordan Manley and TJ. Merritt. Series concept by Gary Stromberg.
(56:33):
Executive producers are Jason English, Sean Titone, Gary Stromberg, Virginia Prescott, L. C. Crowley,
and Brandon barr Our. Senior producer is Amelia Brock, Production
manager Daisy Church Fact checker Savannah Hugley. Legal services provided
by Canoell Hanley PC. Additional production by Claire Keating Casting
(56:55):
director Julia Chriscau. Casting support services provided by Breakdown ex Press.
Episode eleven cast Wayne j as Wally Bean, John Washington
as news reporter, Julia Chriscau as news reporter. If you
like the show, let us know, like subscribe, leave five
star reviews. It really helps. Also check out our show
(57:17):
notes for a full list of reference materials.
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