Kinshasa in the early 70s = Mobutu, the abacost, Rumble in the Jungle and…

Zaire 74‘.

Taking place during Ali’s memorable fight with the world heavyweight champion at the time George Foreman, this was both a well timed and well executed music event rivaling any of its global counterparts.

Zaire 74′ was the pro-black 3 day music festival that enlisted the likes of James Brown, BB King, Miriam Makeba plus a whole host of other African, Black-American and Hispanic artists.

Possibly being overshadowed by the fight itself, a very curious Jeffrey Levy-Hinte (When we were Kings) decided to take on the task of gathering, cutting and editing all the archived footage of this magnanimous musical affair. As a result, he now presents us with: “Soul Power” the documentary.

Coined as ‘The Greatest Music Festival That You Have Never Seen’ – we owe it to ourselves to take the “Never” out; and alter the premise.

For anyone inspired by Black music of that era or the ‘Black Revolution‘ occurring at that time, Soul Power promises to deliver the goods.

This brings us onto the screening…

Happening this Sunday (3pm) at Electric Cinema on Portobello Road, I urge you to get your goat-meat skewers ready for a 90 minute lesson in Black music history on the big screen*.

then…

From here, Pause and Shook magazine keep the buzz going in the form of an afterparty at Marketplace. They’ve managed to charm a stellar line up of DJs including Charlie Dark, Eric Lau, Bemi (Amplified), Juven (Pause), Hits (Pause) and Eric Soul (Afrogroov)

Free entry, freebie give-aways and quality choonage galore – get ready to say it loud:

I’m black and proud.

*Apparently you can get discounted tickets for the screening too if you email info@putmeonit.com