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November 27, 2024 54 mins

Fight promoter Don King and his business partner Hank Schwartz join forces with African strong man, President Mobutu of Zaire to put on an epic boxing event. To up the star power of this international affair, Don King joins forces with Hugh Masekela and Stuart Levine to build the three-day music festival, Zaire ‘74. It will serve as the lead-in to the next great superfight. As Ali and Foreman get into fighting shape, jazzman Hugh Masekela pushes both musical and social boundaries, strengthening the bond between Black Americans and their roots.

REFERENCE BOOKS:

“The Rumble in the Jungle” by Lewis Erenberg

“Ali: A Life” by Jonathan Eig

“Only in America” by Don King (autobiography)

“The Fight” by Norman Mailer

“The Harder They Fall: Celebrities Tell Their Real Life Stories of Addiction and Recovery” by Gary Stromberg

“Hit Me, Fred” by Fred Wesley (autobiography) 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
In order to bend the world to his will. Fight
promoter Don King had a favorite secret weapon to wield.
It was always cash.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
As Don King said over and over again, as he
told me, cash is King and King is cash. He
used cash to basically like grease the wheels for everything.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
That's the Politzer Prize winning biographer of Muhammad al Li,
Jonathan i I recounts how Don King loved to use
cash to wow and manipulate boxers, especially Muhammad al Lee.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
So when Ali would come over to his house, on
King said, open that drawer over there and just filled
with cash, like rolls of cash, loose bills, and Ali's
you know, eyes went bug eyed and opened wide, and
Don King says, you can stick your hand in there
one time and take as much cash as you can get.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
But it's like the claw game in the bar.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
You get to go down one time, pick up as
much as you want, and come back up, and that's
what you get.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Don King knows that Ali will always miss the real
lesson at hand, the lesson about control and Don King's
subtle yet tight fisted control of the boxer's futures.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
He did this a lot because it was just a
way of like showing his power. And he said everybody
would rush and they would try to grab too much
at once instead of like looking for where the big
rolls of cash were. And he just laughed and he realized,
you know, this is his way of starting to take
advantage of people.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Cash is King, and King is cash. Don King's days
as a numbers man and street hustler taught him a
useful truth. People tend to focus on the flash and
the spectacle and ignore their self interest. Professional fighters scrambled
to fill their oversized fists with bills, ignoring all the

(01:43):
future money Don King would make off them in the ring.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
And he would do that all the time. He would
offer people cash upfront, knowing that he was going to
make a lot more on the back.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
End for the rumble. In the Jungle fight his baby.
His first masterpiece of promotion, don King pulls out all
the stops. Most notably, he offers up a whopping five
million dollar payday to both Ali and Foreman.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
First of all, he's promising them both ungodly amounts of
money and saying, even if the deal doesn't go through,
you still get to keep a million bucks. And he
tells Foreman I've already got Ali, and he tells Ali,
I've already got a Foreman. So he's totally playing them
off of each other and playing to their egos.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Ego is both the great strength and the great weakness
of any prize fighter, so it's their ego that Don
King works.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
He's telling Foreman, the only way for you to get
any respect this to beat Ali. And he knows Ali
desperately needs this fight with Foreman, so it's really convincing
Foreman is the greater challenge.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
But of course Don King does what Don King does best.
He hustles Foreman.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
He does that by telling him that Ali's desperate for
this fight, and you're gonna get paid. You know, you're
the champ. You're the reminding him how it's going to
be to beat Ali. It's a brilliant psychological game that
is playing.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Once their deal is in place, Don King gleefully announces
the Rumble in the Jungle will be the next great
heavyweight title fight. He makes this grand announcement the day
before the Foreman Norton title fight down in Caracas, Venezuela,
which remember, Foreman wins that title fight easily. Now, when

(03:23):
word gets out about the upcoming Ali Foreman fight. The champ,
George Foreman, is asked by the boxing press if he
thinks he can beat Ali. Foreman replies, in his laconic style.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Is an elephant heavy.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
As for his upcoming tussle with Ali aka the People's Champ,
Foreman boasts.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
I saw Ali at my fight with Norton, and he understood.
Our fight in Africa was all set. There's an agreement
pending in Africa is a bona fide location for this fight.
It's fitting that I knock out Ali in the junk.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
And then the champ attempts to talk some game of
his own about Ali.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
The man has a certain gift, and if you knock
his neck off, which I intend to do, he'll still
have the gift. I don't believe in philosophy. I believe
in theology. Ali was talking a lot, but people formed
their opinions on what they saw him do, not what
he said. The wisest statement I ever heard was said

(04:20):
to me before the fight in Caracas. It was that
I was the jamp, so be cool. I didn't know
what was meant by it until after the fight, and
it was that I was the champ and I didn't
have to. I didn't have to say.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
A bunch of stuff. I could be cool.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
The question remains, can George Foreman indeed be cool? Not
like Ali, but like just be cool. Welcome to Rumble,

(04:59):
the story of Foreman and the Soul of seventy four.
I'm your host, Zaren Burnett, the third from iHeart Podcast
and School of Humans. This is Rumble. Previously on Rumble.

Speaker 5 (05:16):
The brilliance in the bullshit come together in a way
no one's ever seen before. In Don King, He's Park, Gangster, Park,
khan Man, Park, visionary Don King.

Speaker 6 (05:25):
You know he's always working an angle.

Speaker 4 (05:27):
Remember the Qur'an said, the black man will lead the
world out of darkness. Man, you can't run from this.
This is destiny. Baby.

Speaker 7 (05:37):
In the continuing game of can You Top This? We
now take you to Kinshasa, formerly Leopoldville's Year Deep in
the Heart of Africa.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
In April of seventy four, when news breaks about the
next great super fight, the boxing press reacts well, the
sportswriters overreact. Their biggest question is who is paying for
this fight? The answer Don King and his main partner
from Video Techniques, Hank Schwartz. The pair manages to put

(06:14):
together a shady cabal of moneymen, a consortium of international financiers.
There's a real estate company from Cleveland, Don King's hometown.
They put up five million dollars. Second is a British
fight promoter who promises to put up the other five million,
but that money falls through during negotiation, so the head

(06:34):
of an English investment company, John Day, steps in, not
the golfer. Third in the consortium is a Panamanian company
one based in Geneva, Switzerland, and that's known to do
business with the President of zaiir Aka. It's one of
his secret overseas shell companies. Fourth is the garran torr

(06:55):
for the fight contract the nation of Zaire itself, which
really means it's just President Mabutu sesay Ciku and Kucku
and Bandu Waza bangal Aka, the all powerful warrior who,
because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes
from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake. Quite importantly,

(07:17):
this next great super fight is billed as a gift
from the all powerful Warrior to his people, one wrapped
up and decorated in the themes of liberation and soulful renewal.
To guarantee his spectacle, Mabutu invites the people's champ to Zaiir.
Mabutu wants his celebration of blackness to be an event

(07:40):
never to be forgotten and to achieve his aim of
immortality in memory. He also invites the whole world to
come to Zaiir, to the center of Africa for his homecoming.
It is a seductive cell, especially for black folks on
both sides of the Atlantic. As his report in the

(08:00):
press at the time.

Speaker 8 (08:02):
There was a mediate enthusiasm for the project and it
was in no way diminished when men from Kinshasa discovered
that they can negotiate directly with a remarkable black brother,
Don King, a huge, theatrically garalous figure with a hairstyle
that suggests, as someone said, that he has just stepped
out of a math onto a bear electric wire.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
So we wind up in Paris with a group of
investors with mineral interests in Zayed and may say to Schwartz,
do you have a black guy in your company? He'll
have to talk to the people in Zaire. I did,
and we put it together.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
To answer any questions the press has about Zayer's readiness
to host such a major event. Don King promises that this.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
Fight will be a tribute to the sports world, and
more importantly, to the black world. Black men will be
coming together with mutual respect. It will be symbolic the
prodigal sons will be returning home to Africa, the motherland
of black folk. This will be a spectacular such as

(09:12):
never been seen on the earth as yet. It will
be the fight of our lifetime.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Meanwhile, there's one person who remains skeptical about the African nation.
He warns his friend about any plans to go to
Zaire for the fight. He says if he goes, he
better be on his best behavior. Muhammad Ali teases his
friend Howard Cosell that you go over there agitating and
you'll get cooked. There's Ali reducing things down to a

(09:42):
racist Hollywood trope Cannibals in the dark Heart of Africa.
But Ali isn't the only one adding some tension in
terms of how he speaks about the host nation. Don
King originally tries to sell the upcoming super fight with
the slogan from the slaveh Ship to the Championship. It
has a nice rhyme to it, there's an evocative, provocative

(10:05):
nature to those words. Plus there's that sense of ascendants
from the enslaved up to champions. As Lewis Ehrenberg, author
and a former professor of black history, duly notes.

Speaker 9 (10:18):
My perspective is that's the transition. They once were slaves
and now look, they trod the earth as giants of culture, music, sport.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yet the host nation of Zaire, and specifically President Mabutu,
hates any mention of slavery to sell the fight. This
is the exact opposite message that he wants to send
to the world as a president, selling both the future
of his young nation and reconnecting to the pre colonial past.
But Buttu is already walking a very delicate path. This

(10:53):
is one aspect of his nation's history. He wishes to
avoid the ugly truth that it was African leaders like
him who sold rivaled tribesmen and women and children to
the European slavers.

Speaker 9 (11:06):
The one thing that Mobutu didn't want to have publicized
is the idea of slaveship, which implicated many black tribes
and peoples because they were involved in the slave trade
as well.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
In the early seventies, Black Americans were just beginning to
popularly think of Africa as roots, as the motherland, no
longer a place of shame or a source of racist
kids jokes like African Booty Scratcher or those old newspaper
comics with bone in the nose cartoon characters. Now, modern
Africa was becoming real and present for Black Americans. Yet

(11:43):
for cultures in West and Central Africa, they're well aware
of their historic role in the slave trade. Many don't
want to resurface old wounds at the exact time when
the cultures are reconnecting. Ever, the storyteller, President Mabutu.

Speaker 9 (11:59):
He was happy about the positive aspect Black folks showed leadership,
business acumen, political sensibility, but the slavery aspect was always tense.
They don't use it after the beginning the notion of
the slave ship to the championship.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Instead of dealing with that dangerous but true narrative, Mabutu
understands that the spirit of returning home is a far
better message to send. It's a safer, easier symbol to sell.
Other than this initial disagreement over marketing, Don King and
President Mabotu find that they get along remarkably well as

(12:36):
business partners, mostly because, as Jonathan I points out, Don
King is blend to.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Work with with crooks for one thing, and dictators And
you know, this is part of the genius of Don King,
and maybe it comes from being in the dirty world
of boxing and having been a you know, a convicted criminal,
like his morals are are appliable to say the least.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
Plus, Don King sees what he alone can uniquely offer
to a dictator in training like Mabutu.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
He recognizes that these dictators would love the opportunity to
host a heavyweight fight. Think what kind of attention, what
kind of respect that's going to bring for Babutu in Zair.
This is going to give them instant worldwide status in
a way that like a dictator can only dream of.
Like how many people would they have to kill to
get that kind of power. They've tried the killing already

(13:29):
and it only goes so far. But now they can
become you know, world figures, and Don King can deliver
you know, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, or Muhammad Ali
and Joe Fraser to these outposts where they don't get
any positive media attention.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
Now, if you're Don King and you can offer that
sort of positive publicity to a newly self minted dictator.
You're only wondering one thing.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
How much is that worth? Well, it's worth almost infinite money.
And people like Bbutu have infinite amounts of money because
they're raping their own countries, So to get tens of
millions of dollars from them is nothing. Suddenly Don King
has found this well spring of dirty money and he
doesn't care that it's dirty.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
You could say Don King is key to the creation
of the modern dynamic we now know as sports washing.
The Rumble in the Jungle marks a new page in
the playbook for a developing world dictator. Thanks to Don King,
the despots see how a marginal world figure with a
bad reputation can use the majesty of sports to essentially

(14:36):
launder his image.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Or on an international stage. And we're talking about you know,
billions of dollars and thousands of lives that are in
the balance here, and it's definitely a pioneering moment.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
President Mobutu is the kind of leader who's best described as.

Speaker 10 (14:54):
He was a puppet of the United States, basically.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
To fully grasp the mini crimes and can conspiracies that
culminate in the presidency of seyes Ciku Mabutu. We spoke with.

Speaker 10 (15:05):
I'm Ronica Lippincot. I teach about the geography of Africa,
including its historical geography, and I director afric Kind of
Studies program at Hofstra.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
That's Hofstra University in New York.

Speaker 10 (15:17):
I also am the associate director of our Center for Race,
Culture and Social Justice.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
Through today's lens, it's easy to see that Mabutu was
an ego mad and merciless despot, but he disguised it
with symbolism and pageantry, which means it should come as
no surprise to you that at the time of the
rumble in the Jungle, Mabutu lives in a plush palace compound.
The one thousand acre estate is known for its grandiosity.

(15:47):
For instance, the president doesn't just have a pool, Mabutu
has an Olympic sized pool. And he doesn't keep a
few exotic pets. Nope, there's a full zoo that stretches
across the acres of the compound. There's also an enormous
pagoda in the gardens. It was a gift from China.
Alongside this luxurious presidential compound sits a three story riverboat,

(16:12):
the boat's name President Mabutu. Sitting at anchor. Next to
the riverboat is a smaller boat, a hospital ship. Its
name Mama Mabutu. This is the man who's responsible for
preparing his nation for the next great heavyweight title fight.
Mabutu knows the eyes of the world will be on Zaiir.

(16:33):
That's what he wants, that's his plan, that's what he's
paying for. Thus he also warns his nation what is coming,
and he expresses it in the style of a Soviet
era dictator. In the months just before the fight, there
high above the streets of Kinshasa, Mabutu has great big

(16:55):
billboards erected. The enormous looming signage proclaim aims quote a
gift from President Mabutu to the people of Zayir and
an honor for the black man. This is how Mabotu
makes his leadership palatable to his countrymen and country women.
He placates them with gifts and with grand symbolic gestures

(17:16):
such as the ali Foreman fight.

Speaker 10 (17:20):
As much as Mubuchu is a darling of the West,
he was very much tied to some sense of nationalism
as a way to consolidate his power.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
You see, during the Cold War, many savvy developing world
leaders discovered a way to win support from the West
simply promised to be an anti communist. That declaration excused
all manner of crimes against humanity, and it freed the
strong men to pursue the worst impulses of power. Being
an anti communist is the reason so many corrupt autocrats

(17:57):
emerge as the rulers in this period of Africa in
liberation in the sixties and seventies.

Speaker 11 (18:03):
I guess the best way I can say this is
I believe that Magutu is all about Mbutu, and however
he can gain support and consolidate his power, I think
he would do that.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Essentially, what Mabutu and men like him promised to the
West is a devil's bargain. Mabutu's presence as a strong
man leader is both a point of pride for his
people look at how powerful he is, but also his
displays of power effectively silenced dissent.

Speaker 10 (18:33):
When you see a man with millions and millions of
dollars and you're living in abject poverty, you know, I'm
sure the Congolese people questioned him, but they didn't have
a voice for so long to express their outrage.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
And Mabutu made sure to quash any voice of opposition
or political challenger who might usurp his authority.

Speaker 10 (18:56):
There are a few things that Magutu did under his
political region. One of them was establishing this one party
political system, and he would years and years that he
was in power, he had these periodic sham elections which
he ran unopposed for president.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
To further solidify his despotic rule, Mabutu promises to his
partners in the West to be the postcolonial overseer for
their economic exploitation. Mabutu offers to rubber stamp the legitimacy
of their vast mineral extraction, the pillaging by the West
of the Congo's resource rich Katonga region. In exchange, the West,

(19:38):
namely the United States, tolerates Mabutu's authoritarianism and rewards him
with further corruption. Meanwhile, this super fight is also Mabutu's
advertisement of this power, and thus countless contractors and teams
of construction workers now have the unfortunate task of delivering

(19:59):
Mabutu's gifts to the people of Zayir. What that means
for them is they now need to rebuild a soccer
stadium into a world class venue to hold this heavyweight
title fight, but also the training facilities, the accommodations for
the world press, the hotels for all the tourists, which
also means improving the telecom and the other infrastructure things

(20:20):
like Rhodes in Kinshasa. In many ways, they must modernize Zayir,
and they have six months to do it. While the
Rumble in the Jungle was largely made possible by Don King,

(20:41):
the three day concert Zaire seventy four was not his thing,
well not originally. The international Music festival was first the
dream of two artists, Hugh Masekela and Stuart Levine.

Speaker 6 (20:55):
Stuart I first knew through the film because he's this
amazing character, Like, who is this guy who's obviously organizing it,
who's oftentimes in an altered state, you know, for whatever
reason of both what he took in and then he
the fact that he probably didn't sleep for a week.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
That's Jeffrey Kusamba Hinti, the director of the film Soul Power,
which focuses on the Zaire seventy four Music Festival. He
was also the editor of When We Were Kings, which
focuses on the rumble in the jungle. Having watched hours
of footage, Jeff's one wish is that there were more
cameras recording everything and everyone, not just the boxers and

(21:35):
the big stars. So much of the story was driven,
shaped and made possible by a man you rarely see
in either film, Stuart Levine.

Speaker 6 (21:45):
But knowing Stuart after the fact and explained to me
that he really was the life force of pulling together
and that was one of the sad parts of the
filmmaking that, you know, when it came to James Brown.
There's ten cameras and everything is recorded.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Also there's Stu's best friend and creative partner, Hugh Masekela,
who co produced the three day Music Festival with Stu.

Speaker 6 (22:07):
Hugh Masekela was already in Africa when it was being
organized out of New York because he was, I think
doing all the African acts. So I only saw him
very intermittently in the footage, like when he pops in
to talk to Miriam. You know in the movie, there's
not much more than that.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
That's Miriam as in Miriam Mikayba, who will also travel
to Zaiir to perform at the festival. She's a perfect
example of the musicians that Hugh and Stu bring to
the stage in Kinshasa. As Jeff observed in the documentary
film Footage.

Speaker 6 (22:41):
Hugh Masekela really brought these amazing artists together.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
The person who was responsible for building up the excitement
for this bill of incredible artist who'd all be sharing
the same stage in Zaire was the PR man, and
this rare experience was life changing for him.

Speaker 12 (23:01):
I'm Gary Stromberg. I did the public relations for the
festival in Zayir. I was there hopefully to attend the fight,
but plans changed. I'm very close friends with Stuart Levine
and Humasekela. That's how I got involved in the project.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Gary Stromberg's friendship with Hugh and ste predates the Zayre
seventy four festival. But you best believe that when the
pair dreamed up their idea for a music festival in Africa,
they turned to their friend who was good with the
PR to help them spread the word. Public relations is
what Gary was doing for a living at the time,

(23:37):
even if he was making it up as he went along,
but he was good. Not too long after his time
in Zaire, the Rolling Stones hired Gary to tell their
story to the world press. Now, back when he first
started out, I.

Speaker 12 (23:52):
Was the music division of a mainstream PR firm called
Hansen and Schwam. I didn't know anything about PR, but
I looked good. I was young, and so he set
me up as the music division. Very soon after that,
Stuart Levine and Hugh Masekela were introduced to that office
through their attorney.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Let's not forget this was the Woodstock era after all,
so that means.

Speaker 12 (24:16):
They were both high as kites when they came into
the office that day, as was I. So we got
off famously right from the get go. I didn't know
anything about PR, and they didn't know very much about
what PR was intended to do. They had just formed
a company called Chisa Records, which was their record company.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
The word Chisa, which you may think of as a
slang term for pot, originally is a Zulu word. It
means to burn. Once Hugh and Stu had Chisa Records
up and cooking.

Speaker 12 (24:47):
And they had their first hit called Grazin in the Grass.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
That was nineteen sixty eight, Right on time for the
Pan African zeitgeist blooming in the culture. Hugh Masekela's song
came a song of the summer, also a new sound
for people yearning for a new world. In July, his
song hit number one on the Billboard charts. The stratospheric

(25:13):
success allowed Hugh and Stu to think even bigger, and
that's where Gary Stromberg comes into their story.

Speaker 12 (25:20):
So their attorney knew that they needed PR or thought
he knew that they needed PR. They went to Hanson
and Schwamp, who directed him to me, and our friendship began.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
This chance bit of serendipity led to lasting relationships outside
of business.

Speaker 12 (25:36):
We became very close friends. We were called Huey, Stewie
and Jewey. It was our nickname extent. I just loved
those guys. They were just they were like me. I mean,
they wanted to have fun, they were cooking in their careers,
and you know, they looked at the world very similar
to the way I looked at the world.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Hugh Masekela was clearly his own man, Stuart Levigne was
just as much his own man, and Gary fit the bill.
The three looked at the world with righteous eyes, but
more importantly burned to change the world, remake it anew Also,
it was still the sixties early seventies.

Speaker 12 (26:13):
We had the consciousness of people who were getting high
and young people who were getting high. Who you know
that we were living in the world of Richard Nixon
and you know, very conservative politics and stuff.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
And we were just rebels.

Speaker 12 (26:25):
We weren't buying the bullshit that was coming down from
what our government was telling us. It was the Vietnam War.
We didn't go along with the program. And we were
comfortable together because of Hugh.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Stu and Gary made a strange and fast team. They
worked well together and always thought of the people first
and foremost. And so years later.

Speaker 12 (26:47):
When Stewart and Hewitt came up with the idea for
Zaire for the festival, they came to me and we
got this idea, We're going to try to put this
festival together. I was a big boxing fan. I love
the idea of going to Zaire and being near Ali
and this whole deal. And I loved the music that
Masekela and Stewart created. My passion in my heart was
in R and B and jazz, and so Hugh was

(27:09):
one of my favorite people.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
I loved his music.

Speaker 12 (27:11):
I loved the whole idea of exploring Africa music. And
so when they, you know, came up with the idea
of going to Africa, I signed up right away.

Speaker 13 (27:21):
Oh my name is Selimma Masekella. I am the son
of Hugh Masekella, and so that is how I am
related to this world.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
As Hugh Masekela's son, Selema enjoyed a rare view of
his father. He got to see how his father paid
a lasting price to create his art to live free
as he did.

Speaker 13 (27:40):
I think Graising in the Grass was a real big
two edged sword for my father in that here's this
like the style of music and this backbeat that no
one's really ever heard before, Like it's got this macanga
type roots in it, and it's catchy as fuck, and
it becomes you know, it's one of the biggest songs

(28:01):
in nineteen sixty eight, and it turns him into a superstar.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
When I asked my pops, he clearly remembers the immediate
impact of Hugh Masekela's music.

Speaker 14 (28:10):
Then he did that live at the Whiskey album with
coincidence and all that up up and away and all
those things and people that he was just too good.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Lola Love also warmly remembers Hugh Masekela's music.

Speaker 15 (28:24):
Hugh Masekela, they don't play his music here. Gosh, I'm
so sad that I can't turn on the radio and
I hear Hugh Masekela's song. The only song they play
here is Graising' in the grass. And he wrote so
many more.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
She ain't wrong.

Speaker 15 (28:38):
One of the greatest jazz trumpeters, but also storytelling the
stories that he talks about, the South African story Stemola marketplaces.
His music is so melodic and then when he sings,
you just totally get lost in Johannesburg or gone out.

(29:01):
He worked with musicians from all over the continent and
each different country had a different sound.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
That was the impetus in seventy four for him and
Stu to create a music festival that showcased African sounds,
the dream to turn people on to what was going
down in African music.

Speaker 13 (29:22):
He and Stu thought, I believe that with that they
would be able to now make more African rooted music
and begin to like make this popular. And the labels
were like, that's cute. That was a one off. Now
y'all go over here.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, that industry talk didn't sit well with Hugh or
with Stu.

Speaker 13 (29:44):
They were rebels. They were also enjoying all of the
eccentricities that came with being a musician in the scene
at the time in the late sixties early seventies.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
As in, they got high and they got engaged. They
didn't chill, They got on folks' faces. They agitated for
the new way that they imagined and the sounds they
heard in their imaginations. But that was not at all
what the music executives wanted. They preferred catchy pop tunes

(30:17):
they could easily sell to the American youth market. That
was not what Hugh max Kela was about.

Speaker 13 (30:24):
His shows were the only place where he could find peace.
And so if let's say you were in the audience
and you thought that you being the cool guy talking
to your date in the middle of the show, he
was going to stop that shit and let you know
you didn't look out in the crowd be like, do
you think that we came here to hear you, man?
Nobody came here to hear you. They came to hear meme. Man.

(30:47):
And if you think that it's going to get you
some tale. Man, I got bad news for you. Shut
up and listen to the show.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Lola Love once sat in on one of his audiences
and absorbed every moment of Hugh Massacre's performance.

Speaker 15 (31:01):
I remember going to see you. My manager took me
to see him at the Village Gate. I fell in
love with his playing and his voice. I thought he
had the sexiest voice in the world.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Later, much later, in Zaire, she met Hugh Masekela. By
then she was a professional dancer, sharing the same stage
as him.

Speaker 15 (31:24):
We got to be great friends, and I met Stu
and we were all friends.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
My Pops also has a vivid memory of seeing Hugh
play his jazz live and him singing his ass off.

Speaker 14 (31:36):
He would singing a song, he would introduce it, he
would say what it meant. So then when you hear
the song deep though he didn't know a single word
in the song, you knew what they were singing about.
It's like yeah, and the emotion carried the meaning.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
James Brown's band leader, Fred Wesley, was friends with Hugh
Masekela during this time in his life, and Fred still
speaks highly of his musical comerce.

Speaker 16 (32:00):
He never got away from who he was, you know,
because he carried us to Sueito where they were having
some kind of awards to people, and he came on
stage and he was an old man then, but he
was dancing like the old African dancing, dancing by himself.
He didn't have his trumpet with him, but you could

(32:21):
tell that he was still connected with his people, the
people of Soweto. He wasn't here international start he had become.
He would still Hugh Maseequila.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
As Fred Wesley said, Hugh Masekela carried his people with
him wherever his path took him because he was there champion.
Hugh Masekela was also a man unafraid to speak truth
to power, just like Muhammad Ali, just like Miriam Makida,
and it made Hugh Masekela unwelcome in his homeland.

Speaker 14 (32:56):
The thing about Hugh is he was absolutely like an
African aristocrat and his bearing. He wasn't asking for anything.
He's like, I'm the best horn player you ever heard.
I'm coming here to play my horn for you. Y'all
sit back and listen. And I got some stuff to

(33:16):
say too, because I'm also a thinker in the world,
and this shit I see right here looks a lot
like South Africa.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
He not only had criticisms of his homeland, Hugh was
just as likely to turn his tongue against the racism
he saw in his new home, the United States. As
my Pops recalled, Hugh would say.

Speaker 14 (33:39):
Your reputation is better than this. You all claim to
do things that I'm seeing different. You know, so that
y'all should check yourself. And then they try to get
mad at him, but they couldn't argue, well, it's not
his business. Yes it is, of course.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
As a citizen of the world wherever he found himself,
Massequela made the people catching hell his business. Hugh Masekela
wasn't asking, he was demanding change because he knew the score,
he knew his worth.

Speaker 14 (34:11):
We're not asking anybody for anything. We're not complaining about
what we don't have, but we're in the business of
getting it. Not to ask you for it, not to
plead with you, in reason with you, but just to
get you the fuck out of the way so I
can get my shit. And that's the way he always
struck you like. He never seem at a loss for understanding.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Much like Ali Hugh Masekela's willingness to stand up tall
and speak his mind to power won him fans all
around the globe.

Speaker 14 (34:43):
His political calculations were timely and they were grounded an
international thought, but they were applicable to America and South Africa.
So they said, no, I recognized this. I know what
you all to do. You're pretending that this is the
land that are free and home of they're brave. But

(35:04):
I'm in Mississippi right now and they're not free, and
the people here are not brave.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
First and foremost, Hugh Masekela was a musician, and it
was his musical evolution that was perhaps the most impressive
aspect of all his achievements. He relentlessly evolved.

Speaker 14 (35:23):
His music always grew. He continued to make better and
better music as he got old. A lot of times
one people get older and they start doing their old
shit and just redoing it. He kept making new stuff.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
That was the nature of Hugh Masekela, a musical man
of the people, an intellectual aristocrat, a soul driven to evolve,
to find new things to say, to discover new sounds
and new ways to connect with people, and to aid
their evolution as well, a cultural ambassador, guided by the

(35:56):
certainty that a change is always coming. That's what Zaire
seventy four was, the promise of change and a moment
of evolution. During his ascendants as a celebrity and all

(36:17):
his many trials and tribulations, Hugh Masekela never once lost
sight of what mattered most to him, the liberation of
his people, the people of South Africa, from the violent,
racist apartheid state that ran his country. Hugh Masekela was
unrelenting in his faith that one day, and be it,
one day, soon South Africa would be free.

Speaker 13 (36:40):
A lot of people thought that my father was crazy,
you know. They would always ask like, why don't you
take citizenship here in the States or.

Speaker 4 (36:49):
In the UK.

Speaker 13 (36:50):
And he literally would just feel like because I'm going
home one day. And they would look at him with pity,
like sadness, not even empathy, just like oh, pobre, like
this is just the way the world is. And his
theme of his life was about somehow, some way apartheid

(37:13):
ending so that he could go home.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Meanwhile, he played music, but as he performed, he found
that with each passing year, the awards, the accolades, the applause.

Speaker 13 (37:25):
None of this gave him satisfaction like true satisfaction. He
enjoyed creating, and he loved making music and everything that
came with it. But I believe wholly that his heart
and his spirit was deeply unfulfilled because he could not
go home.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
His own success in freedom became a painful reminder of
the relentless oppression back home. He could not enjoy what
he called a life, not until his homeland and his
people were free.

Speaker 13 (37:55):
So he never was able to really revel wholely in
any of it, the way you think someone who has had,
you know, such a crazy and story to a musical
journey would, And the older I got, the more I
learned what that meant.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Hugh Masekela's career trajectory slowed, and by the early seventies,
according to him quote, no record company was interested in me.
So he went home to Africa. He returned to the
continent to find inspiration and to make music with players
who felt the way he did. There were new sounds

(38:33):
to chase after and bring back for the eager audiences
all around the world.

Speaker 13 (38:39):
My father was my best friend, my favorite storyteller. I
lived vicariously through the entirety of his journey musically as
an activist, and I think most of how I see
the world and attempt to walk through the world is

(39:00):
based entirely on the blueprint of his experience and the madness,
the beautiful madness that was his life.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Ramapolo Hugh Masekela was raised in Witbank, South Africa, in
the township of quak Guka. He arrived on April fourth,
nineteen thirty nine. His mother was a social worker. His
father was an artist, a sculptor who worked as a
health inspector in the coal mining town. His grandmother ran
an illegal bar. She was who primarily raised young Hugh.

(39:34):
There at his grandmother's illegal drinking spot. Hugh learned from
her rough client tele all he could, and he carried
that curiosity forward with him in life. Hugh Masekela once said,
quote one of the great things also about Witbank was
that all these people brought their different music and their
different stories about where they came from. As a little kid,

(39:57):
I hung out with them in the backyard, in the kitchen,
and I know I knew all about their countries.

Speaker 13 (40:02):
Not to mention South Africa a really diverse place. You
have thirteen different tribes, languages, and this intersection of all
different types of music that comes with that, and he
just drank it all in. That really helped to shape
who he was.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
At age twelve, young Hugh entered Saint Peter's Secondary School,
a boarding school close to Johannesburg. He learned some piano,
He sang for money on the streets with his friends,
and then one day, when he was fourteen, he went
to a movie. It was an American film about the
jazz cornet player Bick Spiderbeck. The movie starred Kirk Douglas.

(40:37):
It was called young Man with a Horn. That movie
changed Hughes whole world. After seeing the film, Hugh Masechaela
picked up the trumpet and he never put it back down.

Speaker 13 (40:49):
My father was a trumpet player, flugelhorn player, singer, activists,
comedian and all around one of the coolest human beings
that you have. He was also a product of apartheid.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Hugh gets his first trumpet from a local music store
run by father, Trevor Huddleston, who was a chaplain at
a local school. Huddleston was also vocally anti apartheid, and
he was internationally known With his help, young Hugh Masekela
learns to respond directly to the violence of apartheid with art,

(41:26):
his own art. His music becomes his voice and his weapon.

Speaker 13 (41:31):
As a young nineteen year old who was excited about
music and making music underground, not just with black people
but with white people, his life was steadily becoming more
and more in danger, and also in the manner in
which he chose to speak musically was putting him in danger.
And so he was able to escape through a divine
intervention literally of a man named Father Trevor Huddleston, who

(41:55):
was his music teacher at the school that he went to.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
Father Huddleston was friends with a famous American jazz man,
one Louis Armstrong. In fact, Old Satchmo sent a horn
to South Africa specifically for Hugh Masekela to play, a
gift from musical Royalty, and the cultural poll of the
United States only grew stronger. That was about when, with

(42:20):
Huddleston as his de facto mentor, Hugh Masekela's life path
would change again.

Speaker 13 (42:26):
Huddleston made it possible for my father to get out
of South Africa and he stopped in London for a
brief time, and then it made his way to New
York City where through the help of me and Mickayba
and Harry Belafonte, he would get into the Manhattan School
of Music right around nineteen sixty.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
His musical and cultural connection to America would deepen with
time and with relationships.

Speaker 13 (42:47):
And as a little kid, you know, his lens into
the outside world of South Africa was through records, listening
to the gramophone, so he would you hear all of
these beautiful big bands and jazz as, and his idea,
his vision of what America was or might be, was
through what he heard in the music.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
In nineteen sixty seven, Hugh Masekela was invited to play
at the Monterey Pop Festival alongside American music acts like
Otis Redding and Eric Burden and the Animals. The experience
would stay with him over time. He looked to recreate
this experience but in Africa. In nineteen seventy one, Ghana
hosted a music festival dubbed Ghana seventy one that sealed

(43:33):
the deal. Hugh Masekela committed to his dream to put
on a multi day music festival dedicated to the music
of the black and brown people of the African diaspora,
and after his musical career slowed down in the US
in the early seventies, Hugh Masekela returned to the continent,
but still not his homeland of South Africa. Instead, he

(43:54):
went to Guinea, where his friend Miriam Mikaba and her
former black panther husband Stokely Carmichael aka Quame Terrey had
recently relocated. Hugh stayed for a while in Guinea, then
he moved on to Liberia. Later he popped back up
in London where he recorded an album with African reed
player Doodoo Pukwana. The album was called Home Is Where

(44:18):
the Music Is. It's a fitting motto for Hugh Masekela's life.
Soon enough, Hugh Masekela was on the move again. He
relocated to Ghana, then to Nigeria. That was nineteen seventy three.
That's also when he met fellow African musical great Fela Kuti.
Around that same time, the Nigerian musician was creating a
new genre of music dubbed Afrobeat. The two musicians forged

(44:42):
a path forward, and Hugh's connection to music kept him
going and kept his hope alive, especially when the world
was not enough.

Speaker 13 (44:52):
One thing about my dad, like, if you look at
like the entirety of the history of his life, resilience
and reinvention. Resilience in reinvention, the ability to fall seemingly
to what should be the end and resurface a new
and with a new perspective and in turn a new

(45:12):
sound or new way of making people feel that people
couldn't ignore. And that's what he did.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
And then one day in nineteen seventy four, Hugh reads
about the perfect event already planned to go down in
Africa later on that same year. It's the heavyweight title
fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, and it offers
Hugh Masekela the ideal venue to make his dream real.

Speaker 13 (45:41):
With Zia seventy four, with him and stew it was like, Hey,
let's get all the biggest black artists that we can
on the planet on a plane to Africa and do
a concert for this fight. Now again, this is when,
like the substances were so good at the time that
you could act. It'd be like, yes, let's do this

(46:03):
and pick up the phones and start calling moufuckers. And
that's what they did.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Hugh Masekela and Stuart Levine first approached Don King with
their proposal to add a music festival to the fight,
make his fight an even larger international event. It'd be
like the hospital benefit that started his friendship with Ali
and first got him into boxing. Don King thinks to himself.

Speaker 9 (46:27):
The festival would add the whole global aspect of the event.
It would make it even more special.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
Originally, the plan was that the music festival would occur
just before the fight.

Speaker 9 (46:39):
It would be three days of music and then the
boxing event, and this would draw tourists, it would draw investors,
it would draw world attention and really elevate the country
of Zaire above anyone else.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
That was the plan anyway.

Speaker 9 (46:55):
And the idea behind it makes a certain amount of sense.
It fits the notion of the black at antic, the
circularity of culture and music from Africa to the United States,
to the Caribbean and back to Africa. And at a
time when many Black Americans are looking for their roots,

(47:15):
they're looking for their roots in the music.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Don King agrees to host the festival Zaire seventy four,
but he also tells Hum and Stu they'll need to
raise their own money to pay for it. After all
he's been through. Don King's tired of dealing with financiers.
As Fight writer Mark Kriegel notes.

Speaker 5 (47:34):
He's putting together an international concert, dealing with strong men
in Africa, and at a time in his life where
he should be reporting to his parole officer.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
He's pulling off the biggest coup.

Speaker 5 (47:47):
That boxing has ever seen.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
The tougher nut to crack is Mabutu, the President of Zaiir,
needs to approve this three day music festival, which begs
the question how is this good for Mabutu. When he
is approached, Maboutu does spot the benefits of the music festival.
He grasps the symbolic value for him. He agrees to

(48:11):
play host. But just like Don King, Mabotu offers them
no money for the three day music festival. So Stuart
Levine and Hugh Masekela agree they'll go find the money.

Speaker 9 (48:24):
They get King to push them to the foe so
they can promote this event.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
They somehow manage to secure their own funds. The money
comes from a group of Liberian investors. The overseas financiers
agree to not only pay for the festival, but also
for a film crew. They imagine an event film, something
akin to the Woodstock concert documentary.

Speaker 9 (48:48):
I mean, this is a festival that is above and
beyond any other type of music festival, even Woodstock.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
To help get things going, Hugh and Stu bring on
a veteran of the music industry, Don King's friend, the
multi talented Lloyd Price, most famous as the singer of
the R and B hit stagger Lee. That same summer
of seventy four, Lloyd Price tells the New York Times quote,
our purpose was to document the history of the beat.

(49:16):
Black America's greatest strength at present are sports and music.
We want to combine them and help Blacks in America
strangers in an alien land, to grasp the strand of
the motherland. The musical Beat pr man Gary Stromberg clearly
remembers when Lloyd Price joined.

Speaker 12 (49:35):
Them, he was surprising to me because he was a
guy that kind of on the business side of it,
not on the artistic side so much. He was the
kind of the guy that managed the musicians and such,
And I didn't know anything about him other than that
he was Stagger Lee and a great music artist. But
he was a guy that really had his stuff together.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
James Brown's dancer Lola Love is also quick to give
as much credit as she can to Lloyd Price for
what he brought to the festival planning.

Speaker 15 (50:02):
Well, all I know is it was Lloyd Price that
made that money happen. Okay, Lloyd Price made sure they
got that money. And you know, he was just an
amazing person. I didn't get to interact with him a
lot because once he found out James Brown was not
getting on that plane, he was off to the racist
to find that money.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
More on that later. The salient point is.

Speaker 15 (50:24):
And I'm glad he did because I wouldn't be sitting
here talking about Zyrus seventy four.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
With Lloyd Price on their side and Don King pulling
the strings. Hugh and Stu make plans for their African
music festival to become real. However, they must also never
lose sight of the fact they are now working for
Don King, band leader for James Brown, Fred Wesley is
there in the room in Los Angeles when Don King

(50:53):
and Lloyd Price approach the godfather of soul, mister James Brown,
and they asked him to perform as the main headliner
in Zaire.

Speaker 16 (51:03):
I was just along for the ride. We were talking
about who was gonna be on the festival. Man, I
couldn't believe they'd say bb King, the Jazz Crusaders, the Spinners.
I said, I don't see how you gonna get all
these people together at one time to do the music
festival in Africa.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
You know, Fred Wesley had just one other question.

Speaker 16 (51:25):
I didn't know what Zaya was.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Of course Fred doesn't bring that up, since.

Speaker 16 (51:31):
It was a meeting and they were talking about it,
and they were talking about it like it was really
going to happen.

Speaker 4 (51:36):
You know.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
Now, with the ball fully rolling for Zaire seventy four,
after Mabutu approves it and Don King and Lloyd Price
get on board to make it happen, Hugh and Stu
now must spend the summer working the phones trying to
convince the biggest names in music to come to a
soccer stadium in Zaire. That's not all, though, They opened

(51:59):
an office in high Staff, because they'll also need road crews,
a soundboard, a lighting set, a stage crew to build it.
They'll need a small village of people to pull off
this music festival and to fly them all to Africa.
They will also need a whole hell of a lot
of good luck. On the next episode of Rumble, every breath,

(52:27):
every piece of her chest and heart she gave it off.

Speaker 13 (52:30):
She would come off stage almost ready to collapse.

Speaker 4 (52:33):
It's a concert before the fight, the three day Festival.
It will make Woodstock look like an elementary school band concert.

Speaker 15 (52:41):
Foreman got off the plane with German shepherds, and the
German shepherds with the dogs the Belgiums used to control
the Congolese people.

Speaker 4 (52:51):
I am the Greatest.

Speaker 1 (52:52):
George Foreman is a Belgian.

Speaker 17 (52:56):
Rumbo is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast.
Rumbell is written and hosted by Zaren Burnett. The third
produced and directed by Julia Chriscal. Sound designed and scoring
by Jesse Niswanger. Original music composed by Jordan Manley and T. J. Merritt.
Series concept by Gary Stromberg. Executive producers are Jason English,

(53:19):
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
Canoel Hanley PC. Additional production by Claire Keating and John Washington,
Casting director Julia Christcau. Casting support services provided by Breakdown Express.

(53:45):
Episode seven cast Anthony Brandon Walker as George Foreman, Abraham
Amka as Muhammad Ali, Terence Flint as Don King, John
Washington as news reporter.

Speaker 18 (53:58):
Special thanks to Lewis Aaronna. Check out his book Rumble
in the Jungle. It's a great resource. Also thanks to
Jonathan I for his book Ali Alife. And finally thanks
to Zarenz pops Zeke, who grounds this material like no
one else. If you like the show, let us know,
like subscribe, leave five star reviews. It really helps. Also

(54:21):
check out our show notes for a full list of
reference materials.
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Host

Robert Greenfield

Robert Greenfield

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