James Brown in Zaire 1974: When funk devastated DR CongoFew people remember that before Muhammad Ali and George Foreman met in the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, there was supposed to be something else. Long before the first punch was thrown in Kinshasa, Congo, organisers planned a three-day funk music festival intended to celebrate the connection between African and African American music. Known as Zaire ’74, the festival was conceived by South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela and producer Stewart Levine, who had previously studied together, where they imagined an event that would introduce American audiences to African music. As Levine explained, “The festival was going to be a device for expanding consciousness. Levine would later describe the festival as a complete failure because “hardly anybody saw it”.