January 22, 2025 • 53 mins
What do our heroes leave behind? Nico Ali-Walsh shares memories of his grandfather, The People’s Champ. George Foreman transforms after The Rumble in the Jungle, realizing that Ali “beat the devil” out of him. Hugh Masekela is finally able to return home to South Africa and his son, Selema follows in his footsteps. Fred Wesley can still play the trombone and will do so as long as he can. After Vietnam, the momentum behind the Civil Rights Movement seems to all but disappear. History moves on. What’s left is the legacy of these soul rebels.
LITERARY REFERENCES
“The Greatest, My Own Story”by Muhammad Ali (autobiography)
“The Rumble in the Jungle” by Lewis Erenberg
“Ali: A Life” by Jonathan Eig
“The Fight” by Norman Mailer
“Shadow Box” by George Plimpton
“Ringside: A Treasury of Boxing Reportage” by Budd Schulberg
“King of the World” by David Remnick
OTHER REFERENCE MATERIALS
“When We Were Kings” (Documentary by Leon Gast and David Sonenberg)
“Soul Power” (Documentary by Jeffery Kusama-Hinte and David Sonenberg)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Muhammad Ali. The name still carries a rare magic. It
calls upon his spirit, which was unyielding. But that magic
we think of now wasn't always the same back then,
as filmmaker Jeffrey Kusama Hinte puts it.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
You know, in the late sixties he was vilified. I mean,
Ali was just considered a pariah even into the seventies
until after the fight. So afterwards, remember in this great
beloved figure, which he was, But he wasn't before that.
But this was part of the process of making that happen.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
There has never been anyone like him. There will never
be another like him. He was an all American original.
He was the best of us. Even at his worst,
he still told the truth of America. His racism was
America's racism, and his victories became the people's victories. Muhammad
(01:01):
Ali was and will always be the people's cham.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I think it was Bob Dylan who said that, you know,
Ali was the great personality of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
One can track the progress of America by following the
life of Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
You see this young black kid discovering his identity, discovering
black pride in the middle of the civil rights movement.
Then you see the civil rights movement ending and fighting
Fraser and Ali losing, but discovering that Americans kind of
loved him even more when he lost. Suddenly you see
kind of an embrace that wouldn't have been possible during
the radical rebellious phase of the sixties.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And then when Ali rises to fight again to reclaim
his title and he faces Foreman in that hot, inhumid
stadium in Zayere, this is the moment when what we
think of as the sixties come to a thundering, triumphant close.
It was as if all the fights and all the
battles and all the cultural energy of the sixties it
(02:01):
all ends. When George Foreman falls and Muhammad Ali raises
his gloved fists in defiant victory. It's this peak moment,
and it's the end of an era. As a boxer
and as a man, Ali had come so far, endured
(02:21):
so much. His struggle for a better world came at
a steep price, but his sacrifices earned him the respect
of people around the globe. In nineteen sixty four, he
was Cash's clay, young punk kid, the Louisville lip, that
brash and arrogant fighter who wanted the whole world to
know he was too pretty not to be the champ.
(02:44):
As his biographer Jonathan I describes Ali.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
In the sixties, he was this loud mouth braggart. You know,
Black people worn supposed to talk to white authority that way.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
But you better believe Ali didn't care. He forced the
culture of the United States to change to progress, just
the same as how he grew and changed as a man.
By nineteen seventy four, the people's champ reclaims his throne,
and once again Ali has shook up the world.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And he's now a hero in a way that like
nobody imagined possible when he was so unpopular in the sixties.
And I think that when you get into the seventies
and we're into this age of the celebrity and pop
culture is exploding and athletes are becoming millionaires and commercial prospects,
you know, it's becoming more of a business. Ali is
still refreshing because he's real. It's just no bullshit about
(03:34):
the guy.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
When Ali reclaims his stolen title, he also rights the
wrongs done to him, and in his victory over the
powers that be, the people rejoice for Ali.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Getting the press on his side, getting the crowd on
his side, all this energy like Ali Bombay, and he
has God on his side and he can't lose. And
Mu's electrifying. And when you look at the whole footage,
like you feel him becoming animated with that thought that
the passions of these people are working through him.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
By the time Ali lifts the Olympic torch in Atlanta
in nineteen ninety six to help light the Eternal Flame
and mark the opening of the Games, the former Olympic
champs hands now visibly shake from Parkinson's. His famous verbosity
is now reduced to a hushed whisper, a great man
(04:31):
humbled by time. Fred Wesley remembers this day, well.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
When I saw him light that torch for the Olympics,
it really brought tears in my eyes, for real. It
was an exciting moment for the world to see.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
You know, when as he becomes older and sicker and
more vulnerable, you know, we embrace him in a whole
new way. We forget how radical he was.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Muhammad Alie has become a heroic figure who exists on
a singular level. He's the rare person who, like Willie
Nelson and Dolly Parton, Aretha Franklin, and Snoop Dogg. Is
an icon who is beloved by everyone.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
And we embrace him as almost like an all American hero.
And maybe that's not fair because we you should remember
him for how dangerous he was, not a safe, you know, comfy, huggable,
squeezable Ali. But that's just that tells you something about
the country and how it's changed that we want to
find this safe and comfortable way to love Ali.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
In the end, Like Martin Luther King Junior Muhammad, Ali
also dreamed of a better world, and Ali believed America
could attain it. Well, let me correct that Ali believed
that the American people could attain it. Ali trusted in
the hearts of the people to one day overcome their
(05:47):
fears and prejudice. The thing is, no man, no woman,
no person is perfect. We are each an imperfect collection
of human tendencies. Yet in the examples of MLK and Ali,
we easily see how love outlasts hate, how a man's
(06:07):
violence may achieve small goals in the short term, but
a person's legacy of love is what truly lasts.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
We went out for the Academy awards, and they would
put us up at the Beverly Hills Hotel and Muhammad
Ali had a cottage and he was there and an
amazing presence, and he was already he was sick.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Man.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
It was said that, you know, he didn't speak, but
he did speak, actually, but he had to speak like
in a whisper. And you know, I think he really
had this tremendous appreciation that the film could portray him
in that way, you know, because again, so many audiences
afterwards see them as this beautiful, popular person, but he
lived a life where he wasn't that person, where he
(06:50):
was marginalized and vilified, and you know, had to overcome
tremendous adversity. So I think that being able to see
himself in this great light and then knowing that other
people were seeing him like that as well, was very gratifying.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Mohammad Ali finally got to see himself the way the
people saw him.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
You're rooting for him, not just in that sports way,
but almost like in this this sort of mystical quality,
like he's the best of us, and he must prevail,
you know, if we were to survive.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Welcome to Rumble, The story of Ali Foreman and the
soul music of nineteen seventy four. I'm your host zarn Burnett,
the third from My Heart podcast and School of Humans.
Speaker 6 (07:49):
This is rumble.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Martin Luther King Junior, who's quoted and beloved now, is
not the same radical, anti war, anti capitalist firebrand that
he was at the end of his life. Instead, his
legacy has been codified, essentialized, reduced down to a few
well worn sound bites. The complicated life of his mind,
(08:21):
the intense fire of his soul has been excised, just
like a butterfly in a museum collection. Mlk's legacy is
now pinned to a board, a lifeless husk, a colorful
shell that hints at the vibrancy that once existed. This
same thing has happened to Muhammad Ali, the man who
(08:41):
floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, is
largely reduced to sound bites, motivational means, and poster quotes.
He's been rendered a safe and bloodless symbol of his
past self. Societies often choose to remember heroes in ways
that say more about the society that it does about
the hero. Subsequent generations prefer to feel comfort from the
(09:06):
tales of their long gone. Great men and women their
heroes of old, rather than the trials that made them
heroes in the first place. MLK wasn't just the man
who judged others not on the color of their skin,
but on the content of their character. He was also
the minister who evolved his stance on labor and became
(09:26):
a zealous advocate for economic justice. He was not a
businessman's life coach. Nor was MLK a cuddly, nonviolent teddy
bear who wanted everyone to just get along. MLK, like
Muhammad Ali, was a fighter, a human possessed of a
fierce morality. There is a tendency for time to sanitize
(09:49):
this radicalness, to defang those who fought for change. Time
also sands away the hard edges. It loses sight of
the obstacles that had to be overcome, and what we
are left with is this celebrity version, the Hollywood biopic version,
one based on a true story. Yet this sanitization often
(10:12):
overlooks the most important aspect of a great person, how
they make others feel. A person's true legacy of their
greatness isn't the memory of how they shook up the world,
but how it felt when they did, how that shaking
rippled out, and how it reshaped the world for others.
But we also cannot overlook the costs such great men
(10:35):
and women must pay to reshape our world. For MLK,
the cost was his life. For Muhammad Ali, he paid
the cost with his mind, his body, and his soul.
As a fight writer deeply familiar with the brutality of
the fight game, Mark Kregel remains astounded by the punishment
Ali endured in the ring. Kregel considers it the litmus
(10:59):
test of a fighter's will and its further evidence of
Ali's greatness.
Speaker 7 (11:04):
Ali is martyred by his own courage, by his own ego.
If you look at the body shots that Ali took
in round five, the will and the ego that's required
to stand through that, not just in Zaire, but countless
other times. That wailing away in his body the bill
we see him paying later in life, when everyone's cheering
(11:25):
and he's shaking lighting the Olympic torch. That's the price.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
For a sense of the bodily damage. Here's a snippet
from my conversation with biographer Jonathan ig Our. Executive producer
Gary Stromberg was there too, when he was compiling research
for his biography of Ali, Jonathan I tabulated how many
times Muhammad Ali was punched over the course of his
entire career.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Two hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
What do you make of being punched in the head
two hundred thousand times.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
It's not good. I've been punched in the head three times,
and that's not good. Two hundred thousand is really bad,
and it's sad. Really, I shouldn't joke about it, because
you know, Ali made this choice. It was his career,
so what he was good at, and as he got older,
he recognized that that was the strategy for winning, was
to take a lot of punches. So in the first
phase of his career, he's really taking very few punches.
(12:18):
But when he comes back after his exile, part of
his strategy is to take punches and to let his
opponents get tired and to fight back when time is right,
and that's when he starts to accumulate this damage, and
it absolutely takes a toll. You can see it. Even
in the early seventies. His speech is beginning to slow down,
his words are beginning to slur, and he's fighting.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
On and on.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Even after he's starting to have trembling in his thumbs
and numbness in his feet. You know, the signs are
all there that he's taken too many punches and he
still fights into the eighties.
Speaker 8 (12:47):
Jhonathan, how did you arrive at that number?
Speaker 9 (12:49):
Two hundred thousand?
Speaker 10 (12:51):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (12:51):
I worked with CompuBox. They watched every fight and counted
every punch. There were only a few fights that we
didn't have on film, so we were really able to
It's not an estimate, you know, we counted every punch.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Two hundred thousand punches. The number boggles the mind. Here's
Ali's grandson, Nico Ali Walsh as a young professional boxer.
Nico gets it.
Speaker 8 (13:15):
And not only that, but he's a heavyweight.
Speaker 10 (13:17):
So if you want to get scientific, these heavyweights punched
with the power of like I know a small example
frances and Ganu.
Speaker 8 (13:25):
They measured his punch. He's a heavyweight and he punched at.
Speaker 10 (13:29):
The power of an automobile crash and I think foreman's
up there. So you're getting hit with that power that
amount of times. It's not it's not healthy. It's not
healthy at all.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Nico has followed his grandfather's footsteps, or more accurately, his
footwork right into the ring. He's currently a young, up
and coming professional fighter and has also faced the highs
and the lows of life in professional boxing. He shared
with us some of his favorite memories of his grandfather.
Speaker 10 (14:02):
I lost my first amateur fight and it was down
the street from his house. He was supposed to come
to the fight, but he ended up getting sick that night,
and thank god he didn't come, because I got totally
beat up.
Speaker 8 (14:13):
I just wanted to quit boxing.
Speaker 10 (14:15):
I've never quit anything in my life, so I wouldn't
want to quit on a dream.
Speaker 8 (14:20):
That would be the worst thing for me to do.
Speaker 10 (14:25):
We were at one of my brother's high school football games,
and because there's always so many people around my grandfather,
you know, people love him, we never really got alone time.
But this time he got into the car early. He
was sitting in the passenger seat and I was sitting
in the driver's seat, and we were just chilling in
the car, just me and him, and we were of
(14:47):
course watching my sparing footage this and that, and I
got real scared about like my journey with boxing. I
knew the pressure that was going to come, Like everyone
wants to knock you out in boxing already but now
the fact that you're in Ali, it's like tightened by
ten times.
Speaker 8 (15:02):
So I was scared and I wanted to quit boxing.
Speaker 10 (15:06):
We would kind of communicate with like hands, so I
held his hand and when he squeezed that would mean yes,
and then when he didn't squeeze, that would mean no.
Speaker 8 (15:15):
So I would ask him. I was trying to get
him to say, yeah you should maybe you shouldn't do boxing.
Speaker 10 (15:20):
I was trying to get his blessing so that I
could quit and still kind of have my ego intact.
Speaker 8 (15:27):
Because my grandfather told me to quit.
Speaker 10 (15:29):
So I was holding his hand and I was like,
do you think maybe this isn't for me?
Speaker 8 (15:32):
Maybe I should stop boxing?
Speaker 10 (15:34):
And I didn't feel anything, and I was like, squeeze
my hand if you think like maybe I should just
dull another route.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
I still didn't feel nothing.
Speaker 10 (15:41):
I thought maybe he just didn't hear me, So I said,
do you think I should stick with it? And he
squeezed my hand super super tight, and I was like, damn,
like now I have to.
Speaker 8 (15:51):
I made a promise to myself.
Speaker 10 (15:52):
Way back then that I wasn't gonna quit, So still
to this day, I feel that, and that's why I
keep going.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And that's what having Muhammad Ali as a grandfather can
do for you, prepare you for that brutality of life
in the Ring. But far more than his violence in
the Ring or all the abuse that he could endure,
it was his brief moments with people, those fleeting moments
outside the ring, those tender little moments with strangers. That's
(16:22):
when Ali's soul could shine through, illuminate the moment, and
best exemplify his true greatness. It was how Ali made
people feel that mattered most of all.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I think about all those moments, those magical little moments
that you know, people ran into in an airport, and
I can't tell you after the book came out how
many of them I heard. I could do a whole
book of magical moments with Muhammad Ali. Where like a
woman told me they were in a diner and then
he saw Ali sitting across the way, and her brother
had just had like eye surgery and his whole face
(16:55):
was patched up, and all these people are coming around
to Ali's table and getting autographs, making pictures, and Ali
looks up and sees the kid with like his face
all bandaged stuff, and gets up and says excuse me,
hi minute, and goes and sits with the kid and
like talks to him for half an hour. You know
those things are really they move me that, like you
can make such a big difference with you know, half
an hour of your time. And those are stories that
those people are gonna be telling the rest of their lives.
(17:16):
It was just another half hour in Ali's life.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
There were three great Olympic heavyweight champs of the nineteen sixties,
Cashus Clay, Joe Frasier and George Foreman. The three fighters
each reached the rarefied heights of professional boxing. They all
fought each other, They beat each other, and they would
not have been great without each other, and their stories
(17:51):
are now inseparable.
Speaker 11 (17:53):
I think they all were on the journey that was
set out for them.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
As my pops used to tell me.
Speaker 11 (17:59):
Ali being raised in a segregated city in a successful
black family, it's almost a contradiction in terms, You're gonna
come out of that with some shit on you to
my ideas that don't make sense to anybody else, and then,
if you're lucky, you'll live long enough to outgrow them
or realize how wrong they were.
Speaker 5 (18:18):
I think Ali has done that.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Then there's smoking Joe Frasier.
Speaker 11 (18:22):
Jeorde Fraser is a person with north Star that he's
locked on and that's what he did. He was a
fighter and then he opened the gym he did. He
pursued the life that he was on.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
And lastly there's George the Giant Foreman.
Speaker 11 (18:37):
George Foreman had the most interesting art because when he
got him at seventeen, he was basically a juvenile delinquent
and I didn't have any good direction or any training.
But he was not a bad guy. He's tough as hell,
but he's a good guy. He'll help you, he will
not be fucked with. But he's a decent guy and
he wants to be better.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yet, George Foreman at first to be the bad man,
the villain, the man you love to hate.
Speaker 11 (19:04):
So when he started fighting the people who he was
fighting for, I think they made him a monster. Get
some serious betting odds and all that kind of shit
and get some action, and he went along with it
to the point that it was working and he was
making all that money, but he wasn't happy at all.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Foreman was not cut out to be the villain, and
the result.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
That he was one of the maddest people in America.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
That's the man who stepped into the ring in Zaire,
But that is not the man who stepped out of
that same ring.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
And then he lost to Ali, and he was like empty.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
I think that Foreman is still angry about losing and
angry about not getting a remat.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
There is a distinct divergence that occurs as a result
of the rumble in the jungle.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
I think this is true for most of the guys
who fought Ali. There's still fierce competitors. You know, to
become a boxer at that level, you have to have
the desire to kill, you know, to wounds, to hurt
your opponent, and then to lose Ali and see him,
you know, loved and celebrated as this icon and for
you to be treated as like just another boxer. I
think there's still some antagonism there. I think that this
(20:14):
is just me being a pop psychologist.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
However, with that little caveat aside, Jonathan I concludes that.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I think Foreman is still carrying around a lot of
anger toward Ali, and that's why he, you know, continues
to say that he was drugged, that he didn't lose
the fight legitimately.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Grasping for straws, Foreman searched for something or someone to
blame for his horrendous loss. At first, Foreman preferred to
blame his loss on his trainer, Dick Sadler. He often
claimed his trainer drugged him. Just before the fight, Foreman
said he could taste something metallic and medicinal that was
(20:51):
in the water. In his autobiography, Foreman wrote that.
Speaker 12 (20:55):
What else I ask could account for that medicinal taste
and my terrible tiredness? What else could account for how sick?
And so for a month afterward, and after.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
His humiliating defeat, Foreman turns inward. The loss to Ali
begins a deep and transformative change in George Foreman.
Speaker 13 (21:17):
Foreman really was devastated by this loss. I mean, he
was the big dog, the big lion, the guy who
could beat everybody and beat them down.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
That was his whole identity. But there in the ring
in Zaire, Foreman lost not only the fight, he lost
his sense of self. He walked out of that ring,
and George Foreman had no idea who he was anymore.
Speaker 12 (21:46):
I believe that the sky had fallen. I wasn't champion anymore.
I didn't know what I was.
Speaker 13 (21:54):
Foreman is a guy who didn't have much going for him,
but he had boxing, and he had his strength, and
he had his determination, and he is just undone. I
couldn't believe that this guy could withstand his power. So
what is his power worth? Not much? What is he worth?
Speaker 5 (22:13):
Well?
Speaker 13 (22:14):
Not much.
Speaker 11 (22:16):
That's when he went home and sat down by himself
and realized that he had become somebody that he did
not want to be.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
He shuts himself off to the world of others, and
it takes him many years to undo the damage he
does to himself choosing to be the villain. It was
that lesson he learned from Sonny Liston. To be the
world champion had to be the bad man, the angriest
man alive. But in his humiliating loss before all the
(22:44):
world to see, Foreman learns that was not true.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
That wasn't really his nature. So maybe he was still
a sort of a young man finding himself at that point.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
With the benefit of time, Foreman is able to discover
his better self forman.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Ends up later in life being this wonderful, gregarious, warm
loving guy. I think he was afraid to show that
and felt like he had to be the ogre, He
had to be the bad guy.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
It took him a very long time to remake himself.
Speaker 13 (23:14):
It was very difficult for him. I mean, he doesn't
fight a serious opponent for sixteen months. He has that
crazy thing in Toronto where he fights five heavyweights. He
goes on this path to prove that he was strong.
He's holding up the cow in the picture in one
of the major magazines. He's just attempting to regain his identity.
(23:38):
And then there's a whole thing discovering that is the
man he assumed was his father is not his father,
but is the father of his brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
His great fear when he was a kid back when
his siblings teased him that he wasn't their brother. It
turned out to be true.
Speaker 13 (23:54):
And they had always run him down and made it
seem like he wasn't part of the family and legit,
and it turns out there was something to that. All
of this is in the mix.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
In the years following his loss to ali in Zayir,
George Foreman is a broken man, a man who must
remake himself, and that process begins after yet another humiliating
loss in.
Speaker 13 (24:19):
The ring Foreman goes into the dressing room and has
this major born again experience, which I take seriously. I mean,
he believed he was going to die unless he gave
his allegiance to Jesus. He believed that love was the answer,
that he loved everybody, and he's naked and running around
(24:42):
the dressing room telling everybody he loves them. I mean,
you know, the boxing folks are looking at him like, oh,
George has lost it, and a lot of people continue
to think that. But that changed his direction in boxing
and in life.
Speaker 8 (24:58):
With boxing, people get close to a higher power.
Speaker 10 (25:02):
And I think George Foreman literally said that he was
like Ali beat the devil out of me.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Being a boxer not a biographer, Nico Ali Walsh has
a more intimate understanding of what Foreman faced inside that
ring and later outside the ring in his quiet moments
of reflection.
Speaker 8 (25:21):
People die in boxing every single year.
Speaker 10 (25:23):
It's a serious thing, and especially as a heavyweight, you
know it's tough. When you get that close to what
feels like death, you're going to get drawn to a
higher power.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
And that's what George Foreman did.
Speaker 13 (25:35):
He quit fighting, became a preacher for ten years. He
is a street preacher in Houston. He establishes his own
independent church.
Speaker 11 (25:44):
As he was doing that, he was actually counseling himself.
When he was talking to the congregation, he was talking
to himself.
Speaker 13 (25:50):
This takes up a huge portion of his autobiography and
related success books and so on. You know, there's several
books that he publishes.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
With each book and sermon that George Foreman gave to
his flock, he healed his own heart. He was also
helping other young men and boys find a better path.
Speaker 13 (26:10):
He has a youth group, Youth a Jim, that he
creates to help poor black folks, especially black boys, you know,
make something of themselves, like the Job Corps, but in
a non political way.
Speaker 11 (26:23):
But the trouble was the turns was making no money.
Only place he can make money was fighting. So he said, okay,
I'll just go and fight.
Speaker 13 (26:29):
So he goes back to boxing. But he's been transformed,
you might say, by the love of Jesus, and Jesus has.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Love and so at the age of thirty eight, George
Foreman launches one of the most improbable second acts in
American history. He returns to the boxing ring. He returns
to the professional fight game.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
And then he realized he could still be knock very
about it out.
Speaker 13 (26:54):
He comes back in eighty seven, and he's older now
to wins. Some he lose, but he starts out like
close to three hundred pounds. He gets himself in I
wouldn't say fighting shape, but in better shape. And you know,
he makes fun of himself.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Things had changed for George Foreman, and immediately people can see.
Speaker 13 (27:15):
That he's a different person. He doesn't treat everyone with disdain.
He treats them as legitimate human beings. He sees the
humor in life. He makes fun of himself. He never
made fun of himself before. George was a serious guy,
and this appeals to all sorts of folks.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
As far as his boxing skills go, Foreman can still
throw those hands. He can still hurt a man anytime
his fists connected with flesh or bone. But as my
pop notes.
Speaker 11 (27:48):
He wasn't trying to hurt nobody, because you know, he
wasn't scowling. He was coming in, taking care of business
and going back home. And he was friendly at the
pre fight stuff. You know, he wasn't approachable in a
way that they had never seen it. He said, okay,
good now, this big motherfucker is all right.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Foreman wins the heavyweight Championship of the World for the
second time at age forty two.
Speaker 13 (28:11):
He's the oldest man at that point to win the
heavyweight title.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
George Foreman is all smiles when he's named the champion.
Speaker 11 (28:17):
Of the world and then his kids. Everybody just flocked him.
They found out he was with a nice guy.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Suddenly, unlike before, now everyone loves George Foreman the same
way that they loved Ali. The gruff, no words, no nonsense,
tough guy act is officially over. This is around the
same time that marketers realize George Foreman can make one
hell of a spokesperson. And that's when he starts selling
(28:43):
his famous fat reducing grill.
Speaker 13 (28:46):
He didn't really want to endorse it, but his wife said, no, no,
this is good, this is useful, etcetera. So he lends
his name to it and he makes a huge fortion
and then the company sells out and he gets more money.
Speaker 11 (29:00):
But that was the result of his change. If he
had made that change, not that stuff would have happened.
And he made the change that was him.
Speaker 14 (29:10):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
In nineteen seventy four, the rumble in the jungle garnered
headlines around the world, and it is still to this
day well remembered, considered the stuff of legend in the
fighting world. The music festival, on the other hand, that
was at risk of getting lost in the history books
thanks to foreman's eye injury. When Zaire seventy four concluded
(29:34):
and the stage fell silent, the crowd went home, the
roadies packed up the gear, and the bands flew back
to the US. It did not get the attention that
the festival organizers like Hugh Masekeela, Stuart Levin and Gary
Stromberg had hoped.
Speaker 9 (29:49):
It seemed to me like this was only an event
that occurred there in Africa and that was the end
of it.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
And even though there had been the film Cruise documenting
the momentous three cultural event, there were.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
Still issues about whether the festival was ever gonna see
the light or day.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
For one, the planned documentary, there.
Speaker 9 (30:09):
Was no release, there was no film deal, and it
wasn't broadcast live. So it just seemed that that was it.
There was nothing left, and that was sad. I was
really sad about that, because I really felt that this
was something very special.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
No fanfare, no media attention, just memories of an unforgettable experience.
The dancer for James Brown, low the Love, remembers the
specialness of her time spent in Zaire. It was made
self evident to her when she returned home to the
United States.
Speaker 15 (30:41):
It was a huge culture shock after being loved and
treated with such respect and admiration, and then coming back
to the States, it was a big shock.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
The proof for her came from a negative comparison.
Speaker 15 (30:55):
Once I had been to Africa and got that amazing treatment,
and then when we started going overseas and gotten really
good treatment. When I finished, I said, mister Brown, anytime
you go overseas, I'll go. But I'm done with the States.
And so he would call me when he went overseas,
and I didn't work the States anymore because it was
(31:16):
really rough.
Speaker 10 (31:17):
It was rough.
Speaker 15 (31:18):
You paid to be on the road. That's what we
were doing. Most musicians in the States pay to be
on the road.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
The culture shock wasn't as bad for James Brown. Band
leader Fred Wesley, but he was also a bit more seasoned. Still,
he knew that the experience in Zaire was rare and
life changing. Fred remembers talking with the percussionist Big Black
about his choice to not go back home to the
US and instead to stay in Zaire and study the
(31:46):
drums of Africa.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
When he played those drums, the people reacted to that
just like he was one of their brothers, you know,
because we were all brothers at that time. You know,
we were all learning from each other, and we were
all learning how to teach from the same point that
we were learning from.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
That was the lesson. Fred Wesley took home from his
time in Zaire a deep sense of connection, and it
continued to inform his playing.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
It could still play the trump.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
I don't play it like I used to, but I
could still play, and I still can write music. And
so I'm gonna do that as long as as long
as life lasts, you know, I'm gonna do that, and
I'll always be amazed that when I die, I would
leave something here.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Hearing of this spirit of the times in seventy four,
you may be wondering what happened to the momentum after
all this, Where did all the radical, life changing community
focused energy go? Why did it essentially wither on the vine?
And Die used to tell me it was due to
(33:01):
a few factors. For one, there's the nature of fame.
There's a great danger for a person when they become
a symbol. The danger is sly consider the case of
folks like Muhammad Ali and Angela Davis. People like to
use them as symbols as a way to signal their support,
to send a message across the culture. They preferred to
(33:23):
cheer them on from the safety of the sidelines. Ali
and Angela Davis wanted allies, but they were overloaded with fans.
Speaker 11 (33:32):
America is such a big country that individuals can imagine
making making a difference. You know that that person sitting
by and says, say, there's nothing I can do. But
at this one moment, a bunch of us felt like
there was something we could do, and we were actually
acting on it, and that was fun and very gratifying.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
I was sorry to see it.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
In Based on what he'd told me before, I ask
my pops again why that moment of resistance ended so
abruptly after nineteen seventy four, And why was Ali's heroic
victory and Zaiir like this high water mark in the
culture after which the tide recedes. What was the big change?
(34:18):
His answer comes quickly to mind. He's thought about this,
He says, it comes down.
Speaker 11 (34:23):
To the Vietnam War. When the Vietnam War ended, that
kind of ended those movements.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
In May of nineteen seventy five, tanks from the North
Vietnamese Army seized the capital of South Vietnam, effectively winning
the war, which thereby ends the resistance movement against the war.
The decade long era of protests and radicals and revolutionaries
begins to fade away.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
Its history has a way of moving on, and that's
what happened.
Speaker 11 (34:51):
But for a brief, shining moment, we really felt like
we were doing something.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
I feel like we were making a difference.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And that's why, looking back, it's to my pop that
when Ali and Foreman met in that ring in Zaire
to decide a new world champion for all those folks
like my pops, folks who've been fighting for so long,
and for the culture leaders like Angela Davis, Miriam mckeeba
and Hugh Masekela, the ones still standing in seventy four,
(35:18):
the moment in Zaire felt like it was their victory too,
like it was this final triumphant battle in a very
very long fought culture war. Hugh Masekela had long dreamed
of bringing attention to the nations of Africa, to their
arts and music, to their musicians and performers, to earn
(35:39):
the respect they so rightly deserved, And in that sense,
Zaire seventy four is a landmark success. It launches a
conversation in music and in culture that's still going on today,
and much of the credit belongs to Hugh Masekela.
Speaker 14 (35:56):
He achieved his dream bringing full circle to what I
think I think we're talking about, you know, in what
my father represented and what Ali represented. At the end
of the day, like it comes back down to the
arts and artists being able to like who's going to
have the stones to like to tell the stories and
to make the music and to write the things people
(36:17):
that give people no choice but to feel and actually
tell the actual record of what is happening.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
For his son's Selemma, his father Hugh was and will
always be his greatest hero, and they bear a striking
resemblance of spirit.
Speaker 14 (36:32):
I never would do my impression of him in front
of him, but I did it one day, not even thinking,
in front of my sister, and my sister's eyes got
wide and she was like, this is witchcraft.
Speaker 6 (36:45):
She's like, you.
Speaker 14 (36:45):
Don't understand you transform, you transform. And so my dad
comes in one day and we were all hanging out. Said, hey, man,
I hear you do me. He said, I hear you
do me, and go ahead, go ahead fucking do me then,
and I was like, well, I just can't. He's like,
I don't want to hear your bullshit, man, And so
(37:06):
I literally like I channeled him in front of him,
and his face just went numb and he started laughing.
He said, that's fucking crazy.
Speaker 6 (37:16):
Man. I can't believe you. I can't fucking believe you.
But it's beautiful, man. Do it around me all the time.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
That's crazy is ultimately meant as a compliment.
Speaker 14 (37:26):
I think it's just from studying him so much as
a kid, you know. I that was the gift of
being able to go to all those shows, you know.
I know every single inflection in which shoulder dips when
when on a song. And I just I was my
father's biggest fan, not because he was famous. I didn't
(37:47):
even really know he was famous until maybe fifth grade,
when like a teacher suddenly freaked out when they heard
my name.
Speaker 6 (37:54):
But I just was like, how could this be my dad?
Like this, dude is the coolest suit for human ever.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
And just like with Muhammad Ali and later with George
Foreman after his personal transformation, Hugh Massechela loved to do
what he did best for the benefit of the people.
Yet Selma remembers how there was this untouchable and persistent
ache that lived inside his father.
Speaker 14 (38:21):
But I believe Hoy that his heart and his spirit
was deeply unfulfilled because he could not go home. And
the older I got, the more I learned what that meant.
And I think when it really became crystalline to me
was during the Graceland tour. My dad took me out
of school, convinced my mother somehow that it would be
(38:43):
a positive life experience for me to go on the
road as a roadie at fifteen.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
That's the Graceland tour, as in Paul Simon's global tour
for his Smashit album Graceland featuring the South African band
Lady Smith, Black Mambazo Drew Were was also notable as
it introduced to many outside of the former apartheid nation
the sounds of South African musicians. Hugh Masekela joined Paul
(39:09):
Simon's Graceland tour to promote the music of his homeland,
but also to give some cover for Paul Simon, who
was catching some hell of his own for his choice
to visit South Africa. You see, artists around the world
had been boycotting South Africa in protest of apartheid. Hugh
Masekela said what Paul Simon did was different than playing
(39:31):
a show in South Africa. He was bringing the music
of South Africa out of exile under apartheid. If anything,
he was freeing the musicians. It was a contentious position
to take.
Speaker 14 (39:43):
Those were the days where if you turned on CNN
or any nightly news, one of the lead stories was
the violence that was taking place in South Africa, the
stakes of what apartheid was becoming. Basically like someone just
throw a match on that gas and this whole shit
is going to burn down. And so it made this
(40:04):
this concert, like all the press conferences would be essentially
about the apartheid referendums. And who do you think, Paul,
you are in the midst of what's going on in
South Africa to be and my dad would be the
ones to be like, you need to shut the fuck up.
Here's what y'all are missing the magic that's taking place
over the four hours of this show, in the music
(40:25):
and the sound and the field that you've never heard before.
This is a sample, a small, small, thin slice sample
of what you're being deprived of by this aparthepe thing.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
The Graceland Tour was also a chance to tell the
full truth of apartheid.
Speaker 14 (40:42):
Everyone forgets that up until that point, the US government
was quite complicit in its depth of righteous support for
apartheid and for the South African government, and how it
couldn't possibly be what we think it is, which you know,
fast forward to the day, very familiar type tactics.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
A few years later came the full and complete end
to the system of apartheid and the election of Nelson
Mandela as the President of South Africa.
Speaker 14 (41:09):
They reached out to a lot of the exiles and said, hey,
you can come home. You're not going to go to jail,
you're not going to get killed. And my dad, like
in nineteen ninety, I remember when he called me and
he said they told me I can come home, So
I'm going home, and he sold everything.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
It didn't take Sealemma long to join his father in
South Africa so he could experience it for himself.
Speaker 14 (41:35):
I went for the first time in nineteen ninety one
to help road manage his homecoming tour, his first tour
in South Africa, a tour called Secunjado with two other
South African bands, a band called Sankomolten another one called Bayete.
And that was the first time for me to go
home and meet my grandfather. My name is Seleema. I'm
(41:56):
named after my grandfather, meet my sister for the first
meet my whole family for the first time, and.
Speaker 6 (42:02):
See my father at home.
Speaker 14 (42:04):
But also like it's ninety one, a part that is
like ending, but it ain't over, and it was I
feel like that's when I got uploaded into like the
entirety of me.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
I got there.
Speaker 14 (42:18):
The ancestors said, okay, it's time. Let's give you like
You're gonna be embodied in what your entire being is
now and now you get to look from this day forward,
this is who you are.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Once he grounds himself in that sense of who he was,
who he is and who he could be, Selema Masekela
is now ready to make music with his father.
Speaker 14 (42:40):
I was making my first record with Sonny Levine. Ironically
Stuart Levine's son. We were roommates together in La for
five years, in the footsteps of our fathers, and he
convinced me. One day Sunny was like, yeah, man, like
when are you gonna make your record? And then finally
twenty twelve, I made my first record. It was called
The Sound of All because funny story, I didn't tell
(43:02):
my father that I was making the record, and I
explicitly told everyone that he was not allowed to know.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
But then his dad's old partner, Stuart Levine, caught wind
of the album.
Speaker 14 (43:12):
And Stuart came down to our studio. He said he
wanted to inspect what was going on, and he was
very surprised at what he heard, to the point that
he said, I got to play on this. So Stu
goes up to the house and gets a clarinet and
gets a couple of saxophones and really helped us, like
finish off the record beautifully.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Of course, word soon gets back to his dad, Hugh Masekela.
Speaker 6 (43:35):
So I get a call from my father.
Speaker 14 (43:37):
He's coming to visit from South Africa and he says, hey,
so I hear you did a thing, And I was like, oh, no, yeah, man,
I heard you. You did a thing, and I'm coming
and I better hear it when I get there.
Speaker 6 (43:52):
I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
So Lama was understandably nervous to play his first album
for his very famous physician father.
Speaker 6 (44:01):
We go to have dinner. I burn him a CD.
Speaker 14 (44:03):
We go to have dinner at Deeliana and Venice, and
then we walked out of dinner. We had a great
time eating together, you know, if you you know Gary,
eating with my dad was always.
Speaker 6 (44:11):
My dad loved.
Speaker 14 (44:12):
Food the way he loved music, you know. And so
we have this great meal and then at the end
we're standing on the street corner and he goes, so
did you bring the thing? And I'm like, yeah, I'll
reach it into my pocket and I pull out the CD.
I hand it to him. He'says, okay, man, I'm gonna
go with it and sit with it. I'll see Lena.
(44:33):
And he turns around and just walks off down the street.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
And so Celema watches his father go as he can
feel this electric tangle of nerves creeping up his spine.
Speaker 14 (44:44):
And I'm just standing there being like, well, there goes everything,
you know, because the one thing that was about my
father is an inability to lie to you at tall
at tall, So I'm you know, if he didn't like it,
he's gonna tell me and also be like, don't put
this out and fuck up our name man.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Talk about Nightmare Fuel, especially because it's Selemma's first album.
Speaker 14 (45:10):
So I don't hear anything from him for two days,
and now I'm really starting to stress. And then I
see that I missed a voicemail from him. I'd listened
to the voicemail and he says, Man, it's me. I
just wanted you to know that link. I've been sitting
with this record for two days. Man, I just don't
(45:31):
even know.
Speaker 6 (45:32):
What to say. It's just he said, it's so beautiful, man.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
But not only that, his father confesses to his son.
Speaker 14 (45:40):
He says, you know, if I could sing like you,
I don't even think I would play my own. And
my only complaint is that I'm not fucking on it.
So promise me, if you do this again, you better
make sure that I'm on this fucking record.
Speaker 5 (45:55):
Man.
Speaker 6 (45:56):
I love you.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Selemma was no longer doing an impression of his father.
He took what he'd learned and he'd made something wholly
new something that made his father proud bright.
Speaker 14 (46:07):
I just sat there in my car and I wept,
And that gave me the license to like no longer
be like afraid of this thing that I've been, you
know that I got from him?
Speaker 1 (46:19):
That changes everything for Selema. Soon enough, he starts to
work on another album.
Speaker 14 (46:25):
Twenty seventeen, I'm making another record.
Speaker 6 (46:27):
I call him. I said, hey, were you serious about
what you said?
Speaker 14 (46:31):
Because we're doing another album? He said, when do you
want me to be there? And we told him when
to be here. He got on a plane from South
Africa and he flew here.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Once he had his dad in the studio, Selemma decides
to have some fun, you know, new generation and.
Speaker 14 (46:45):
All Sonny and I were like, yo, let's write him
a rap, like a spoken word like rap. And so
he wrote him this crazy rap and when he came in.
Speaker 6 (46:53):
He's like all right.
Speaker 14 (46:54):
So he came in trying to like be like uptyzing,
what do you guys want me to do? I'm like,
well maybe that you could wrap. He's like, fuck your guys,
but he attacked it.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Hugh Massa Kelak grabs the mic and it's like he'd
been in the lab like with a pen and a pad,
just waiting for this moment and what's the result.
Speaker 6 (47:14):
I hadn't put out my album yet.
Speaker 14 (47:16):
He called me and said, hey, man, so I played
that shit we did for Sony and they really loved it,
like they lost that shit. Man.
Speaker 6 (47:25):
They were like, wow, what is this.
Speaker 14 (47:27):
I was wondering if it would be okay, if maybe
I put it out on my record, and I was like,
you're asking me, and you know, it was so cool
about it. He said, yeah, man, I'm asking you. It's
your fucking shit and my mine, so you know, is
it cool? I was like, yeah, man, it's cool. Absolutely.
So he literally put it out on his record first,
(47:47):
and my album came out like three months later, and
we made a really beautiful record together.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Back in nineteen seventy four, great men laid the groundwork
for lasting legacies, and now fifty years later, from Nico
Ali Walsh's grandson of Ali, to Selemma massechelas son of Hugh,
we hear how those legacies live on in that timeless way.
This now becomes a story of how we accept the
(48:17):
world handed to us and what we each do with it.
We each briefly have our time on stage in the
ring or on the mic, and then we must hand
the world over to those who will inherit the future.
This is a story of the world, its many communities,
and all the people who shaped this tale, from Drew
(48:39):
Bundini Brown to Doc Brotus and even Sonny Liston, those
men who helped guide Ali and Foreman, who influenced them
strengthen them so that they could become what they would
have never been on their own. This is also a
story of brothers in arms, such as the strained bonds
of James Brown and Bill Withers, or muhammadad and Smokin'
(49:01):
Joe Fraser, that dark bond shared by Foreman and Sonny Liston,
or the musical fraternity shared by Hugh and Stu and Gary.
As rivals and peers, they pushed one another to reach
heights they could have never reached alone. This is also
the story of soul rebels, iconoclasts, freedom fighters, and true patriots.
(49:23):
A tale of Black power and Pan African diasporas, Brown
power and Afro Caribbean connections to the Motherland. A story
of rhythm and soul and of the drum and how
it called a people home from the Year of Africa
to the end of apartheid. This is a tale of
(49:43):
people reclaiming their nations, their cultures, their humanity, whether called
the Belgian Congo Zaire or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
From colonial times to modern times, the nation and its
people continue to suffer fro their vast resources. Mabutu is
now dead and gone, yet the shadow of his corruption
(50:06):
still darkens the future of his people. But there is
hope for the dreams of Africa's tomorrows now belong to
African hearts and minds. If you travel the lands of
Africa today, you will still see murals of Muhammad Ali
painted on walls. You will still see his face staring
(50:27):
back at you from t shirts and from posters. He
remains a hero to generations who never saw him fight,
never saw him when he was the champ. Ali boom
Aye Ali.
Speaker 16 (50:41):
Boom Aye Ali was and is the people's champ, and
the people prayed for his victory because his victories were
their victories, and he was and remains my hero.
Speaker 17 (51:01):
A reporter claws his way through the crowd and yells
at me, how did you do it? World Heavyweight Champion?
What do you think of George now I shake my head.
I want to go to my dressing room. I don't
want to tell him what George has taught me, that
too many victories weaken you, that the defeated can rise
(51:21):
up stronger than the victor. But I take nothing away
from George. He can still beat any man in the
world except me. Besides, I already told them, and I
already told you.
Speaker 5 (51:38):
Didn't you hear me? I said I was the greatest.
Speaker 18 (52:00):
Umble is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
Rumble is written and hosted by Zarren Burnett. The third
produced and directed by Julia Chriscau. Sound design 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,
(52:22):
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 Chriscau. Casting support services provided by Breakdown Express.
(52:47):
Episode thirteen cast Abraham Amka as Muhammad Ali. If you
like the show, let us know, like subscribe, leave five
star reviews. It really helps. Also check out our show
notes for a full list of reference materials.
Muhammad Ali. The name still carries a rare magic. It
calls upon his spirit, which was unyielding. But that magic
we think of now wasn't always the same back then,
as filmmaker Jeffrey Kusama Hinte puts it.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
You know, in the late sixties he was vilified. I mean,
Ali was just considered a pariah even into the seventies
until after the fight. So afterwards, remember in this great
beloved figure, which he was, But he wasn't before that.
But this was part of the process of making that happen.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
There has never been anyone like him. There will never
be another like him. He was an all American original.
He was the best of us. Even at his worst,
he still told the truth of America. His racism was
America's racism, and his victories became the people's victories. Muhammad
(01:01):
Ali was and will always be the people's cham.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I think it was Bob Dylan who said that, you know,
Ali was the great personality of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
One can track the progress of America by following the
life of Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
You see this young black kid discovering his identity, discovering
black pride in the middle of the civil rights movement.
Then you see the civil rights movement ending and fighting
Fraser and Ali losing, but discovering that Americans kind of
loved him even more when he lost. Suddenly you see
kind of an embrace that wouldn't have been possible during
the radical rebellious phase of the sixties.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And then when Ali rises to fight again to reclaim
his title and he faces Foreman in that hot, inhumid
stadium in Zayere, this is the moment when what we
think of as the sixties come to a thundering, triumphant close.
It was as if all the fights and all the
battles and all the cultural energy of the sixties it
(02:01):
all ends. When George Foreman falls and Muhammad Ali raises
his gloved fists in defiant victory. It's this peak moment,
and it's the end of an era. As a boxer
and as a man, Ali had come so far, endured
(02:21):
so much. His struggle for a better world came at
a steep price, but his sacrifices earned him the respect
of people around the globe. In nineteen sixty four, he
was Cash's clay, young punk kid, the Louisville lip, that
brash and arrogant fighter who wanted the whole world to
know he was too pretty not to be the champ.
(02:44):
As his biographer Jonathan I describes Ali.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
In the sixties, he was this loud mouth braggart. You know,
Black people worn supposed to talk to white authority that way.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
But you better believe Ali didn't care. He forced the
culture of the United States to change to progress, just
the same as how he grew and changed as a man.
By nineteen seventy four, the people's champ reclaims his throne,
and once again Ali has shook up the world.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And he's now a hero in a way that like
nobody imagined possible when he was so unpopular in the sixties.
And I think that when you get into the seventies
and we're into this age of the celebrity and pop
culture is exploding and athletes are becoming millionaires and commercial prospects,
you know, it's becoming more of a business. Ali is
still refreshing because he's real. It's just no bullshit about
(03:34):
the guy.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
When Ali reclaims his stolen title, he also rights the
wrongs done to him, and in his victory over the
powers that be, the people rejoice for Ali.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Getting the press on his side, getting the crowd on
his side, all this energy like Ali Bombay, and he
has God on his side and he can't lose. And
Mu's electrifying. And when you look at the whole footage,
like you feel him becoming animated with that thought that
the passions of these people are working through him.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
By the time Ali lifts the Olympic torch in Atlanta
in nineteen ninety six to help light the Eternal Flame
and mark the opening of the Games, the former Olympic
champs hands now visibly shake from Parkinson's. His famous verbosity
is now reduced to a hushed whisper, a great man
(04:31):
humbled by time. Fred Wesley remembers this day, well.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
When I saw him light that torch for the Olympics,
it really brought tears in my eyes, for real. It
was an exciting moment for the world to see.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
You know, when as he becomes older and sicker and
more vulnerable, you know, we embrace him in a whole
new way. We forget how radical he was.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Muhammad Alie has become a heroic figure who exists on
a singular level. He's the rare person who, like Willie
Nelson and Dolly Parton, Aretha Franklin, and Snoop Dogg. Is
an icon who is beloved by everyone.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
And we embrace him as almost like an all American hero.
And maybe that's not fair because we you should remember
him for how dangerous he was, not a safe, you know, comfy, huggable,
squeezable Ali. But that's just that tells you something about
the country and how it's changed that we want to
find this safe and comfortable way to love Ali.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
In the end, Like Martin Luther King Junior Muhammad, Ali
also dreamed of a better world, and Ali believed America
could attain it. Well, let me correct that Ali believed
that the American people could attain it. Ali trusted in
the hearts of the people to one day overcome their
(05:47):
fears and prejudice. The thing is, no man, no woman,
no person is perfect. We are each an imperfect collection
of human tendencies. Yet in the examples of MLK and Ali,
we easily see how love outlasts hate, how a man's
(06:07):
violence may achieve small goals in the short term, but
a person's legacy of love is what truly lasts.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
We went out for the Academy awards, and they would
put us up at the Beverly Hills Hotel and Muhammad
Ali had a cottage and he was there and an
amazing presence, and he was already he was sick.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Man.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
It was said that, you know, he didn't speak, but
he did speak, actually, but he had to speak like
in a whisper. And you know, I think he really
had this tremendous appreciation that the film could portray him
in that way, you know, because again, so many audiences
afterwards see them as this beautiful, popular person, but he
lived a life where he wasn't that person, where he
(06:50):
was marginalized and vilified, and you know, had to overcome
tremendous adversity. So I think that being able to see
himself in this great light and then knowing that other
people were seeing him like that as well, was very gratifying.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Mohammad Ali finally got to see himself the way the
people saw him.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
You're rooting for him, not just in that sports way,
but almost like in this this sort of mystical quality,
like he's the best of us, and he must prevail,
you know, if we were to survive.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Welcome to Rumble, The story of Ali Foreman and the
soul music of nineteen seventy four. I'm your host zarn Burnett,
the third from My Heart podcast and School of Humans.
Speaker 6 (07:49):
This is rumble.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Martin Luther King Junior, who's quoted and beloved now, is
not the same radical, anti war, anti capitalist firebrand that
he was at the end of his life. Instead, his
legacy has been codified, essentialized, reduced down to a few
well worn sound bites. The complicated life of his mind,
(08:21):
the intense fire of his soul has been excised, just
like a butterfly in a museum collection. Mlk's legacy is
now pinned to a board, a lifeless husk, a colorful
shell that hints at the vibrancy that once existed. This
same thing has happened to Muhammad Ali, the man who
(08:41):
floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, is
largely reduced to sound bites, motivational means, and poster quotes.
He's been rendered a safe and bloodless symbol of his
past self. Societies often choose to remember heroes in ways
that say more about the society that it does about
the hero. Subsequent generations prefer to feel comfort from the
(09:06):
tales of their long gone. Great men and women their
heroes of old, rather than the trials that made them
heroes in the first place. MLK wasn't just the man
who judged others not on the color of their skin,
but on the content of their character. He was also
the minister who evolved his stance on labor and became
(09:26):
a zealous advocate for economic justice. He was not a
businessman's life coach. Nor was MLK a cuddly, nonviolent teddy
bear who wanted everyone to just get along. MLK, like
Muhammad Ali, was a fighter, a human possessed of a
fierce morality. There is a tendency for time to sanitize
(09:49):
this radicalness, to defang those who fought for change. Time
also sands away the hard edges. It loses sight of
the obstacles that had to be overcome, and what we
are left with is this celebrity version, the Hollywood biopic version,
one based on a true story. Yet this sanitization often
(10:12):
overlooks the most important aspect of a great person, how
they make others feel. A person's true legacy of their
greatness isn't the memory of how they shook up the world,
but how it felt when they did, how that shaking
rippled out, and how it reshaped the world for others.
But we also cannot overlook the costs such great men
(10:35):
and women must pay to reshape our world. For MLK,
the cost was his life. For Muhammad Ali, he paid
the cost with his mind, his body, and his soul.
As a fight writer deeply familiar with the brutality of
the fight game, Mark Kregel remains astounded by the punishment
Ali endured in the ring. Kregel considers it the litmus
(10:59):
test of a fighter's will and its further evidence of
Ali's greatness.
Speaker 7 (11:04):
Ali is martyred by his own courage, by his own ego.
If you look at the body shots that Ali took
in round five, the will and the ego that's required
to stand through that, not just in Zaire, but countless
other times. That wailing away in his body the bill
we see him paying later in life, when everyone's cheering
(11:25):
and he's shaking lighting the Olympic torch. That's the price.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
For a sense of the bodily damage. Here's a snippet
from my conversation with biographer Jonathan ig Our. Executive producer
Gary Stromberg was there too, when he was compiling research
for his biography of Ali, Jonathan I tabulated how many
times Muhammad Ali was punched over the course of his
entire career.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Two hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
What do you make of being punched in the head
two hundred thousand times.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
It's not good. I've been punched in the head three times,
and that's not good. Two hundred thousand is really bad,
and it's sad. Really, I shouldn't joke about it, because
you know, Ali made this choice. It was his career,
so what he was good at, and as he got older,
he recognized that that was the strategy for winning, was
to take a lot of punches. So in the first
phase of his career, he's really taking very few punches.
(12:18):
But when he comes back after his exile, part of
his strategy is to take punches and to let his
opponents get tired and to fight back when time is right,
and that's when he starts to accumulate this damage, and
it absolutely takes a toll. You can see it. Even
in the early seventies. His speech is beginning to slow down,
his words are beginning to slur, and he's fighting.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
On and on.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Even after he's starting to have trembling in his thumbs
and numbness in his feet. You know, the signs are
all there that he's taken too many punches and he
still fights into the eighties.
Speaker 8 (12:47):
Jhonathan, how did you arrive at that number?
Speaker 9 (12:49):
Two hundred thousand?
Speaker 10 (12:51):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (12:51):
I worked with CompuBox. They watched every fight and counted
every punch. There were only a few fights that we
didn't have on film, so we were really able to
It's not an estimate, you know, we counted every punch.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Two hundred thousand punches. The number boggles the mind. Here's
Ali's grandson, Nico Ali Walsh as a young professional boxer.
Nico gets it.
Speaker 8 (13:15):
And not only that, but he's a heavyweight.
Speaker 10 (13:17):
So if you want to get scientific, these heavyweights punched
with the power of like I know a small example
frances and Ganu.
Speaker 8 (13:25):
They measured his punch. He's a heavyweight and he punched at.
Speaker 10 (13:29):
The power of an automobile crash and I think foreman's
up there. So you're getting hit with that power that
amount of times. It's not it's not healthy. It's not
healthy at all.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Nico has followed his grandfather's footsteps, or more accurately, his
footwork right into the ring. He's currently a young, up
and coming professional fighter and has also faced the highs
and the lows of life in professional boxing. He shared
with us some of his favorite memories of his grandfather.
Speaker 10 (14:02):
I lost my first amateur fight and it was down
the street from his house. He was supposed to come
to the fight, but he ended up getting sick that night,
and thank god he didn't come, because I got totally
beat up.
Speaker 8 (14:13):
I just wanted to quit boxing.
Speaker 10 (14:15):
I've never quit anything in my life, so I wouldn't
want to quit on a dream.
Speaker 8 (14:20):
That would be the worst thing for me to do.
Speaker 10 (14:25):
We were at one of my brother's high school football games,
and because there's always so many people around my grandfather,
you know, people love him, we never really got alone time.
But this time he got into the car early. He
was sitting in the passenger seat and I was sitting
in the driver's seat, and we were just chilling in
the car, just me and him, and we were of
(14:47):
course watching my sparing footage this and that, and I
got real scared about like my journey with boxing. I
knew the pressure that was going to come, Like everyone
wants to knock you out in boxing already but now
the fact that you're in Ali, it's like tightened by
ten times.
Speaker 8 (15:02):
So I was scared and I wanted to quit boxing.
Speaker 10 (15:06):
We would kind of communicate with like hands, so I
held his hand and when he squeezed that would mean yes,
and then when he didn't squeeze, that would mean no.
Speaker 8 (15:15):
So I would ask him. I was trying to get
him to say, yeah you should maybe you shouldn't do boxing.
Speaker 10 (15:20):
I was trying to get his blessing so that I
could quit and still kind of have my ego intact.
Speaker 8 (15:27):
Because my grandfather told me to quit.
Speaker 10 (15:29):
So I was holding his hand and I was like,
do you think maybe this isn't for me?
Speaker 8 (15:32):
Maybe I should stop boxing?
Speaker 10 (15:34):
And I didn't feel anything, and I was like, squeeze
my hand if you think like maybe I should just
dull another route.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
I still didn't feel nothing.
Speaker 10 (15:41):
I thought maybe he just didn't hear me, So I said,
do you think I should stick with it? And he
squeezed my hand super super tight, and I was like, damn,
like now I have to.
Speaker 8 (15:51):
I made a promise to myself.
Speaker 10 (15:52):
Way back then that I wasn't gonna quit, So still
to this day, I feel that, and that's why I
keep going.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And that's what having Muhammad Ali as a grandfather can
do for you, prepare you for that brutality of life
in the Ring. But far more than his violence in
the Ring or all the abuse that he could endure,
it was his brief moments with people, those fleeting moments
outside the ring, those tender little moments with strangers. That's
(16:22):
when Ali's soul could shine through, illuminate the moment, and
best exemplify his true greatness. It was how Ali made
people feel that mattered most of all.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I think about all those moments, those magical little moments
that you know, people ran into in an airport, and
I can't tell you after the book came out how
many of them I heard. I could do a whole
book of magical moments with Muhammad Ali. Where like a
woman told me they were in a diner and then
he saw Ali sitting across the way, and her brother
had just had like eye surgery and his whole face
(16:55):
was patched up, and all these people are coming around
to Ali's table and getting autographs, making pictures, and Ali
looks up and sees the kid with like his face
all bandaged stuff, and gets up and says excuse me,
hi minute, and goes and sits with the kid and
like talks to him for half an hour. You know
those things are really they move me that, like you
can make such a big difference with you know, half
an hour of your time. And those are stories that
those people are gonna be telling the rest of their lives.
(17:16):
It was just another half hour in Ali's life.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
There were three great Olympic heavyweight champs of the nineteen sixties,
Cashus Clay, Joe Frasier and George Foreman. The three fighters
each reached the rarefied heights of professional boxing. They all
fought each other, They beat each other, and they would
not have been great without each other, and their stories
(17:51):
are now inseparable.
Speaker 11 (17:53):
I think they all were on the journey that was
set out for them.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
As my pops used to tell me.
Speaker 11 (17:59):
Ali being raised in a segregated city in a successful
black family, it's almost a contradiction in terms, You're gonna
come out of that with some shit on you to
my ideas that don't make sense to anybody else, and then,
if you're lucky, you'll live long enough to outgrow them
or realize how wrong they were.
Speaker 5 (18:18):
I think Ali has done that.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Then there's smoking Joe Frasier.
Speaker 11 (18:22):
Jeorde Fraser is a person with north Star that he's
locked on and that's what he did. He was a
fighter and then he opened the gym he did. He
pursued the life that he was on.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
And lastly there's George the Giant Foreman.
Speaker 11 (18:37):
George Foreman had the most interesting art because when he
got him at seventeen, he was basically a juvenile delinquent
and I didn't have any good direction or any training.
But he was not a bad guy. He's tough as hell,
but he's a good guy. He'll help you, he will
not be fucked with. But he's a decent guy and
he wants to be better.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yet, George Foreman at first to be the bad man,
the villain, the man you love to hate.
Speaker 11 (19:04):
So when he started fighting the people who he was
fighting for, I think they made him a monster. Get
some serious betting odds and all that kind of shit
and get some action, and he went along with it
to the point that it was working and he was
making all that money, but he wasn't happy at all.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Foreman was not cut out to be the villain, and
the result.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
That he was one of the maddest people in America.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
That's the man who stepped into the ring in Zaire,
But that is not the man who stepped out of
that same ring.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
And then he lost to Ali, and he was like empty.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
I think that Foreman is still angry about losing and
angry about not getting a remat.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
There is a distinct divergence that occurs as a result
of the rumble in the jungle.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
I think this is true for most of the guys
who fought Ali. There's still fierce competitors. You know, to
become a boxer at that level, you have to have
the desire to kill, you know, to wounds, to hurt
your opponent, and then to lose Ali and see him,
you know, loved and celebrated as this icon and for
you to be treated as like just another boxer. I
think there's still some antagonism there. I think that this
(20:14):
is just me being a pop psychologist.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
However, with that little caveat aside, Jonathan I concludes that.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I think Foreman is still carrying around a lot of
anger toward Ali, and that's why he, you know, continues
to say that he was drugged, that he didn't lose
the fight legitimately.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Grasping for straws, Foreman searched for something or someone to
blame for his horrendous loss. At first, Foreman preferred to
blame his loss on his trainer, Dick Sadler. He often
claimed his trainer drugged him. Just before the fight, Foreman
said he could taste something metallic and medicinal that was
(20:51):
in the water. In his autobiography, Foreman wrote that.
Speaker 12 (20:55):
What else I ask could account for that medicinal taste
and my terrible tiredness? What else could account for how sick?
And so for a month afterward, and after.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
His humiliating defeat, Foreman turns inward. The loss to Ali
begins a deep and transformative change in George Foreman.
Speaker 13 (21:17):
Foreman really was devastated by this loss. I mean, he
was the big dog, the big lion, the guy who
could beat everybody and beat them down.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
That was his whole identity. But there in the ring
in Zaire, Foreman lost not only the fight, he lost
his sense of self. He walked out of that ring,
and George Foreman had no idea who he was anymore.
Speaker 12 (21:46):
I believe that the sky had fallen. I wasn't champion anymore.
I didn't know what I was.
Speaker 13 (21:54):
Foreman is a guy who didn't have much going for him,
but he had boxing, and he had his strength, and
he had his determination, and he is just undone. I
couldn't believe that this guy could withstand his power. So
what is his power worth? Not much? What is he worth?
Speaker 5 (22:13):
Well?
Speaker 13 (22:14):
Not much.
Speaker 11 (22:16):
That's when he went home and sat down by himself
and realized that he had become somebody that he did
not want to be.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
He shuts himself off to the world of others, and
it takes him many years to undo the damage he
does to himself choosing to be the villain. It was
that lesson he learned from Sonny Liston. To be the
world champion had to be the bad man, the angriest
man alive. But in his humiliating loss before all the
(22:44):
world to see, Foreman learns that was not true.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
That wasn't really his nature. So maybe he was still
a sort of a young man finding himself at that point.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
With the benefit of time, Foreman is able to discover
his better self forman.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Ends up later in life being this wonderful, gregarious, warm
loving guy. I think he was afraid to show that
and felt like he had to be the ogre, He
had to be the bad guy.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
It took him a very long time to remake himself.
Speaker 13 (23:14):
It was very difficult for him. I mean, he doesn't
fight a serious opponent for sixteen months. He has that
crazy thing in Toronto where he fights five heavyweights. He
goes on this path to prove that he was strong.
He's holding up the cow in the picture in one
of the major magazines. He's just attempting to regain his identity.
(23:38):
And then there's a whole thing discovering that is the
man he assumed was his father is not his father,
but is the father of his brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
His great fear when he was a kid back when
his siblings teased him that he wasn't their brother. It
turned out to be true.
Speaker 13 (23:54):
And they had always run him down and made it
seem like he wasn't part of the family and legit,
and it turns out there was something to that. All
of this is in the mix.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
In the years following his loss to ali in Zayir,
George Foreman is a broken man, a man who must
remake himself, and that process begins after yet another humiliating
loss in.
Speaker 13 (24:19):
The ring Foreman goes into the dressing room and has
this major born again experience, which I take seriously. I mean,
he believed he was going to die unless he gave
his allegiance to Jesus. He believed that love was the answer,
that he loved everybody, and he's naked and running around
(24:42):
the dressing room telling everybody he loves them. I mean,
you know, the boxing folks are looking at him like, oh,
George has lost it, and a lot of people continue
to think that. But that changed his direction in boxing
and in life.
Speaker 8 (24:58):
With boxing, people get close to a higher power.
Speaker 10 (25:02):
And I think George Foreman literally said that he was
like Ali beat the devil out of me.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Being a boxer not a biographer, Nico Ali Walsh has
a more intimate understanding of what Foreman faced inside that
ring and later outside the ring in his quiet moments
of reflection.
Speaker 8 (25:21):
People die in boxing every single year.
Speaker 10 (25:23):
It's a serious thing, and especially as a heavyweight, you
know it's tough. When you get that close to what
feels like death, you're going to get drawn to a
higher power.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
And that's what George Foreman did.
Speaker 13 (25:35):
He quit fighting, became a preacher for ten years. He
is a street preacher in Houston. He establishes his own
independent church.
Speaker 11 (25:44):
As he was doing that, he was actually counseling himself.
When he was talking to the congregation, he was talking
to himself.
Speaker 13 (25:50):
This takes up a huge portion of his autobiography and
related success books and so on. You know, there's several
books that he publishes.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
With each book and sermon that George Foreman gave to
his flock, he healed his own heart. He was also
helping other young men and boys find a better path.
Speaker 13 (26:10):
He has a youth group, Youth a Jim, that he
creates to help poor black folks, especially black boys, you know,
make something of themselves, like the Job Corps, but in
a non political way.
Speaker 11 (26:23):
But the trouble was the turns was making no money.
Only place he can make money was fighting. So he said, okay,
I'll just go and fight.
Speaker 13 (26:29):
So he goes back to boxing. But he's been transformed,
you might say, by the love of Jesus, and Jesus has.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Love and so at the age of thirty eight, George
Foreman launches one of the most improbable second acts in
American history. He returns to the boxing ring. He returns
to the professional fight game.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
And then he realized he could still be knock very
about it out.
Speaker 13 (26:54):
He comes back in eighty seven, and he's older now
to wins. Some he lose, but he starts out like
close to three hundred pounds. He gets himself in I
wouldn't say fighting shape, but in better shape. And you know,
he makes fun of himself.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Things had changed for George Foreman, and immediately people can see.
Speaker 13 (27:15):
That he's a different person. He doesn't treat everyone with disdain.
He treats them as legitimate human beings. He sees the
humor in life. He makes fun of himself. He never
made fun of himself before. George was a serious guy,
and this appeals to all sorts of folks.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
As far as his boxing skills go, Foreman can still
throw those hands. He can still hurt a man anytime
his fists connected with flesh or bone. But as my
pop notes.
Speaker 11 (27:48):
He wasn't trying to hurt nobody, because you know, he
wasn't scowling. He was coming in, taking care of business
and going back home. And he was friendly at the
pre fight stuff. You know, he wasn't approachable in a
way that they had never seen it. He said, okay,
good now, this big motherfucker is all right.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Foreman wins the heavyweight Championship of the World for the
second time at age forty two.
Speaker 13 (28:11):
He's the oldest man at that point to win the
heavyweight title.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
George Foreman is all smiles when he's named the champion.
Speaker 11 (28:17):
Of the world and then his kids. Everybody just flocked him.
They found out he was with a nice guy.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Suddenly, unlike before, now everyone loves George Foreman the same
way that they loved Ali. The gruff, no words, no nonsense,
tough guy act is officially over. This is around the
same time that marketers realize George Foreman can make one
hell of a spokesperson. And that's when he starts selling
(28:43):
his famous fat reducing grill.
Speaker 13 (28:46):
He didn't really want to endorse it, but his wife said, no, no,
this is good, this is useful, etcetera. So he lends
his name to it and he makes a huge fortion
and then the company sells out and he gets more money.
Speaker 11 (29:00):
But that was the result of his change. If he
had made that change, not that stuff would have happened.
And he made the change that was him.
Speaker 14 (29:10):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
In nineteen seventy four, the rumble in the jungle garnered
headlines around the world, and it is still to this
day well remembered, considered the stuff of legend in the
fighting world. The music festival, on the other hand, that
was at risk of getting lost in the history books
thanks to foreman's eye injury. When Zaire seventy four concluded
(29:34):
and the stage fell silent, the crowd went home, the
roadies packed up the gear, and the bands flew back
to the US. It did not get the attention that
the festival organizers like Hugh Masekeela, Stuart Levin and Gary
Stromberg had hoped.
Speaker 9 (29:49):
It seemed to me like this was only an event
that occurred there in Africa and that was the end
of it.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
And even though there had been the film Cruise documenting
the momentous three cultural event, there were.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
Still issues about whether the festival was ever gonna see
the light or day.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
For one, the planned documentary, there.
Speaker 9 (30:09):
Was no release, there was no film deal, and it
wasn't broadcast live. So it just seemed that that was it.
There was nothing left, and that was sad. I was
really sad about that, because I really felt that this
was something very special.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
No fanfare, no media attention, just memories of an unforgettable experience.
The dancer for James Brown, low the Love, remembers the
specialness of her time spent in Zaire. It was made
self evident to her when she returned home to the
United States.
Speaker 15 (30:41):
It was a huge culture shock after being loved and
treated with such respect and admiration, and then coming back
to the States, it was a big shock.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
The proof for her came from a negative comparison.
Speaker 15 (30:55):
Once I had been to Africa and got that amazing treatment,
and then when we started going overseas and gotten really
good treatment. When I finished, I said, mister Brown, anytime
you go overseas, I'll go. But I'm done with the States.
And so he would call me when he went overseas,
and I didn't work the States anymore because it was
(31:16):
really rough.
Speaker 10 (31:17):
It was rough.
Speaker 15 (31:18):
You paid to be on the road. That's what we
were doing. Most musicians in the States pay to be
on the road.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
The culture shock wasn't as bad for James Brown. Band
leader Fred Wesley, but he was also a bit more seasoned. Still,
he knew that the experience in Zaire was rare and
life changing. Fred remembers talking with the percussionist Big Black
about his choice to not go back home to the
US and instead to stay in Zaire and study the
(31:46):
drums of Africa.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
When he played those drums, the people reacted to that
just like he was one of their brothers, you know,
because we were all brothers at that time. You know,
we were all learning from each other, and we were
all learning how to teach from the same point that
we were learning from.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
That was the lesson. Fred Wesley took home from his
time in Zaire a deep sense of connection, and it
continued to inform his playing.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
It could still play the trump.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
I don't play it like I used to, but I
could still play, and I still can write music. And
so I'm gonna do that as long as as long
as life lasts, you know, I'm gonna do that, and
I'll always be amazed that when I die, I would
leave something here.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Hearing of this spirit of the times in seventy four,
you may be wondering what happened to the momentum after
all this, Where did all the radical, life changing community
focused energy go? Why did it essentially wither on the vine?
And Die used to tell me it was due to
(33:01):
a few factors. For one, there's the nature of fame.
There's a great danger for a person when they become
a symbol. The danger is sly consider the case of
folks like Muhammad Ali and Angela Davis. People like to
use them as symbols as a way to signal their support,
to send a message across the culture. They preferred to
(33:23):
cheer them on from the safety of the sidelines. Ali
and Angela Davis wanted allies, but they were overloaded with fans.
Speaker 11 (33:32):
America is such a big country that individuals can imagine
making making a difference. You know that that person sitting
by and says, say, there's nothing I can do. But
at this one moment, a bunch of us felt like
there was something we could do, and we were actually
acting on it, and that was fun and very gratifying.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
I was sorry to see it.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
In Based on what he'd told me before, I ask
my pops again why that moment of resistance ended so
abruptly after nineteen seventy four, And why was Ali's heroic
victory and Zaiir like this high water mark in the
culture after which the tide recedes. What was the big change?
(34:18):
His answer comes quickly to mind. He's thought about this,
He says, it comes down.
Speaker 11 (34:23):
To the Vietnam War. When the Vietnam War ended, that
kind of ended those movements.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
In May of nineteen seventy five, tanks from the North
Vietnamese Army seized the capital of South Vietnam, effectively winning
the war, which thereby ends the resistance movement against the war.
The decade long era of protests and radicals and revolutionaries
begins to fade away.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
Its history has a way of moving on, and that's
what happened.
Speaker 11 (34:51):
But for a brief, shining moment, we really felt like
we were doing something.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
I feel like we were making a difference.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And that's why, looking back, it's to my pop that
when Ali and Foreman met in that ring in Zaire
to decide a new world champion for all those folks
like my pops, folks who've been fighting for so long,
and for the culture leaders like Angela Davis, Miriam mckeeba
and Hugh Masekela, the ones still standing in seventy four,
(35:18):
the moment in Zaire felt like it was their victory too,
like it was this final triumphant battle in a very
very long fought culture war. Hugh Masekela had long dreamed
of bringing attention to the nations of Africa, to their
arts and music, to their musicians and performers, to earn
(35:39):
the respect they so rightly deserved, And in that sense,
Zaire seventy four is a landmark success. It launches a
conversation in music and in culture that's still going on today,
and much of the credit belongs to Hugh Masekela.
Speaker 14 (35:56):
He achieved his dream bringing full circle to what I
think I think we're talking about, you know, in what
my father represented and what Ali represented. At the end
of the day, like it comes back down to the
arts and artists being able to like who's going to
have the stones to like to tell the stories and
to make the music and to write the things people
(36:17):
that give people no choice but to feel and actually
tell the actual record of what is happening.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
For his son's Selemma, his father Hugh was and will
always be his greatest hero, and they bear a striking
resemblance of spirit.
Speaker 14 (36:32):
I never would do my impression of him in front
of him, but I did it one day, not even thinking,
in front of my sister, and my sister's eyes got
wide and she was like, this is witchcraft.
Speaker 6 (36:45):
She's like, you.
Speaker 14 (36:45):
Don't understand you transform, you transform. And so my dad
comes in one day and we were all hanging out. Said, hey, man,
I hear you do me. He said, I hear you
do me, and go ahead, go ahead fucking do me then,
and I was like, well, I just can't. He's like,
I don't want to hear your bullshit, man, And so
(37:06):
I literally like I channeled him in front of him,
and his face just went numb and he started laughing.
He said, that's fucking crazy.
Speaker 6 (37:16):
Man. I can't believe you. I can't fucking believe you.
But it's beautiful, man. Do it around me all the time.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
That's crazy is ultimately meant as a compliment.
Speaker 14 (37:26):
I think it's just from studying him so much as
a kid, you know. I that was the gift of
being able to go to all those shows, you know.
I know every single inflection in which shoulder dips when
when on a song. And I just I was my
father's biggest fan, not because he was famous. I didn't
(37:47):
even really know he was famous until maybe fifth grade,
when like a teacher suddenly freaked out when they heard
my name.
Speaker 6 (37:54):
But I just was like, how could this be my dad?
Like this, dude is the coolest suit for human ever.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
And just like with Muhammad Ali and later with George
Foreman after his personal transformation, Hugh Massechela loved to do
what he did best for the benefit of the people.
Yet Selma remembers how there was this untouchable and persistent
ache that lived inside his father.
Speaker 14 (38:21):
But I believe Hoy that his heart and his spirit
was deeply unfulfilled because he could not go home. And
the older I got, the more I learned what that meant.
And I think when it really became crystalline to me
was during the Graceland tour. My dad took me out
of school, convinced my mother somehow that it would be
(38:43):
a positive life experience for me to go on the
road as a roadie at fifteen.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
That's the Graceland tour, as in Paul Simon's global tour
for his Smashit album Graceland featuring the South African band
Lady Smith, Black Mambazo Drew Were was also notable as
it introduced to many outside of the former apartheid nation
the sounds of South African musicians. Hugh Masekela joined Paul
(39:09):
Simon's Graceland tour to promote the music of his homeland,
but also to give some cover for Paul Simon, who
was catching some hell of his own for his choice
to visit South Africa. You see, artists around the world
had been boycotting South Africa in protest of apartheid. Hugh
Masekela said what Paul Simon did was different than playing
(39:31):
a show in South Africa. He was bringing the music
of South Africa out of exile under apartheid. If anything,
he was freeing the musicians. It was a contentious position
to take.
Speaker 14 (39:43):
Those were the days where if you turned on CNN
or any nightly news, one of the lead stories was
the violence that was taking place in South Africa, the
stakes of what apartheid was becoming. Basically like someone just
throw a match on that gas and this whole shit
is going to burn down. And so it made this
(40:04):
this concert, like all the press conferences would be essentially
about the apartheid referendums. And who do you think, Paul,
you are in the midst of what's going on in
South Africa to be and my dad would be the
ones to be like, you need to shut the fuck up.
Here's what y'all are missing the magic that's taking place
over the four hours of this show, in the music
(40:25):
and the sound and the field that you've never heard before.
This is a sample, a small, small, thin slice sample
of what you're being deprived of by this aparthepe thing.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
The Graceland Tour was also a chance to tell the
full truth of apartheid.
Speaker 14 (40:42):
Everyone forgets that up until that point, the US government
was quite complicit in its depth of righteous support for
apartheid and for the South African government, and how it
couldn't possibly be what we think it is, which you know,
fast forward to the day, very familiar type tactics.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
A few years later came the full and complete end
to the system of apartheid and the election of Nelson
Mandela as the President of South Africa.
Speaker 14 (41:09):
They reached out to a lot of the exiles and said, hey,
you can come home. You're not going to go to jail,
you're not going to get killed. And my dad, like
in nineteen ninety, I remember when he called me and
he said they told me I can come home, So
I'm going home, and he sold everything.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
It didn't take Sealemma long to join his father in
South Africa so he could experience it for himself.
Speaker 14 (41:35):
I went for the first time in nineteen ninety one
to help road manage his homecoming tour, his first tour
in South Africa, a tour called Secunjado with two other
South African bands, a band called Sankomolten another one called Bayete.
And that was the first time for me to go
home and meet my grandfather. My name is Seleema. I'm
(41:56):
named after my grandfather, meet my sister for the first
meet my whole family for the first time, and.
Speaker 6 (42:02):
See my father at home.
Speaker 14 (42:04):
But also like it's ninety one, a part that is
like ending, but it ain't over, and it was I
feel like that's when I got uploaded into like the
entirety of me.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
I got there.
Speaker 14 (42:18):
The ancestors said, okay, it's time. Let's give you like
You're gonna be embodied in what your entire being is
now and now you get to look from this day forward,
this is who you are.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Once he grounds himself in that sense of who he was,
who he is and who he could be, Selema Masekela
is now ready to make music with his father.
Speaker 14 (42:40):
I was making my first record with Sonny Levine. Ironically
Stuart Levine's son. We were roommates together in La for
five years, in the footsteps of our fathers, and he
convinced me. One day Sunny was like, yeah, man, like
when are you gonna make your record? And then finally
twenty twelve, I made my first record. It was called
The Sound of All because funny story, I didn't tell
(43:02):
my father that I was making the record, and I
explicitly told everyone that he was not allowed to know.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
But then his dad's old partner, Stuart Levine, caught wind
of the album.
Speaker 14 (43:12):
And Stuart came down to our studio. He said he
wanted to inspect what was going on, and he was
very surprised at what he heard, to the point that
he said, I got to play on this. So Stu
goes up to the house and gets a clarinet and
gets a couple of saxophones and really helped us, like
finish off the record beautifully.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Of course, word soon gets back to his dad, Hugh Masekela.
Speaker 6 (43:35):
So I get a call from my father.
Speaker 14 (43:37):
He's coming to visit from South Africa and he says, hey,
so I hear you did a thing, And I was like, oh, no, yeah, man,
I heard you. You did a thing, and I'm coming
and I better hear it when I get there.
Speaker 6 (43:52):
I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
So Lama was understandably nervous to play his first album
for his very famous physician father.
Speaker 6 (44:01):
We go to have dinner. I burn him a CD.
Speaker 14 (44:03):
We go to have dinner at Deeliana and Venice, and
then we walked out of dinner. We had a great
time eating together, you know, if you you know Gary,
eating with my dad was always.
Speaker 6 (44:11):
My dad loved.
Speaker 14 (44:12):
Food the way he loved music, you know. And so
we have this great meal and then at the end
we're standing on the street corner and he goes, so
did you bring the thing? And I'm like, yeah, I'll
reach it into my pocket and I pull out the CD.
I hand it to him. He'says, okay, man, I'm gonna
go with it and sit with it. I'll see Lena.
(44:33):
And he turns around and just walks off down the street.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
And so Celema watches his father go as he can
feel this electric tangle of nerves creeping up his spine.
Speaker 14 (44:44):
And I'm just standing there being like, well, there goes everything,
you know, because the one thing that was about my
father is an inability to lie to you at tall
at tall, So I'm you know, if he didn't like it,
he's gonna tell me and also be like, don't put
this out and fuck up our name man.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Talk about Nightmare Fuel, especially because it's Selemma's first album.
Speaker 14 (45:10):
So I don't hear anything from him for two days,
and now I'm really starting to stress. And then I
see that I missed a voicemail from him. I'd listened
to the voicemail and he says, Man, it's me. I
just wanted you to know that link. I've been sitting
with this record for two days. Man, I just don't
(45:31):
even know.
Speaker 6 (45:32):
What to say. It's just he said, it's so beautiful, man.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
But not only that, his father confesses to his son.
Speaker 14 (45:40):
He says, you know, if I could sing like you,
I don't even think I would play my own. And
my only complaint is that I'm not fucking on it.
So promise me, if you do this again, you better
make sure that I'm on this fucking record.
Speaker 5 (45:55):
Man.
Speaker 6 (45:56):
I love you.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Selemma was no longer doing an impression of his father.
He took what he'd learned and he'd made something wholly
new something that made his father proud bright.
Speaker 14 (46:07):
I just sat there in my car and I wept,
And that gave me the license to like no longer
be like afraid of this thing that I've been, you
know that I got from him?
Speaker 1 (46:19):
That changes everything for Selema. Soon enough, he starts to
work on another album.
Speaker 14 (46:25):
Twenty seventeen, I'm making another record.
Speaker 6 (46:27):
I call him. I said, hey, were you serious about
what you said?
Speaker 14 (46:31):
Because we're doing another album? He said, when do you
want me to be there? And we told him when
to be here. He got on a plane from South
Africa and he flew here.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Once he had his dad in the studio, Selemma decides
to have some fun, you know, new generation and.
Speaker 14 (46:45):
All Sonny and I were like, yo, let's write him
a rap, like a spoken word like rap. And so
he wrote him this crazy rap and when he came in.
Speaker 6 (46:53):
He's like all right.
Speaker 14 (46:54):
So he came in trying to like be like uptyzing,
what do you guys want me to do? I'm like,
well maybe that you could wrap. He's like, fuck your guys,
but he attacked it.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Hugh Massa Kelak grabs the mic and it's like he'd
been in the lab like with a pen and a pad,
just waiting for this moment and what's the result.
Speaker 6 (47:14):
I hadn't put out my album yet.
Speaker 14 (47:16):
He called me and said, hey, man, so I played
that shit we did for Sony and they really loved it,
like they lost that shit. Man.
Speaker 6 (47:25):
They were like, wow, what is this.
Speaker 14 (47:27):
I was wondering if it would be okay, if maybe
I put it out on my record, and I was like,
you're asking me, and you know, it was so cool
about it. He said, yeah, man, I'm asking you. It's
your fucking shit and my mine, so you know, is
it cool? I was like, yeah, man, it's cool. Absolutely.
So he literally put it out on his record first,
(47:47):
and my album came out like three months later, and
we made a really beautiful record together.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Back in nineteen seventy four, great men laid the groundwork
for lasting legacies, and now fifty years later, from Nico
Ali Walsh's grandson of Ali, to Selemma massechelas son of Hugh,
we hear how those legacies live on in that timeless way.
This now becomes a story of how we accept the
(48:17):
world handed to us and what we each do with it.
We each briefly have our time on stage in the
ring or on the mic, and then we must hand
the world over to those who will inherit the future.
This is a story of the world, its many communities,
and all the people who shaped this tale, from Drew
(48:39):
Bundini Brown to Doc Brotus and even Sonny Liston, those
men who helped guide Ali and Foreman, who influenced them
strengthen them so that they could become what they would
have never been on their own. This is also a
story of brothers in arms, such as the strained bonds
of James Brown and Bill Withers, or muhammadad and Smokin'
(49:01):
Joe Fraser, that dark bond shared by Foreman and Sonny Liston,
or the musical fraternity shared by Hugh and Stu and Gary.
As rivals and peers, they pushed one another to reach
heights they could have never reached alone. This is also
the story of soul rebels, iconoclasts, freedom fighters, and true patriots.
(49:23):
A tale of Black power and Pan African diasporas, Brown
power and Afro Caribbean connections to the Motherland. A story
of rhythm and soul and of the drum and how
it called a people home from the Year of Africa
to the end of apartheid. This is a tale of
(49:43):
people reclaiming their nations, their cultures, their humanity, whether called
the Belgian Congo Zaire or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
From colonial times to modern times, the nation and its
people continue to suffer fro their vast resources. Mabutu is
now dead and gone, yet the shadow of his corruption
(50:06):
still darkens the future of his people. But there is
hope for the dreams of Africa's tomorrows now belong to
African hearts and minds. If you travel the lands of
Africa today, you will still see murals of Muhammad Ali
painted on walls. You will still see his face staring
(50:27):
back at you from t shirts and from posters. He
remains a hero to generations who never saw him fight,
never saw him when he was the champ. Ali boom
Aye Ali.
Speaker 16 (50:41):
Boom Aye Ali was and is the people's champ, and
the people prayed for his victory because his victories were
their victories, and he was and remains my hero.
Speaker 17 (51:01):
A reporter claws his way through the crowd and yells
at me, how did you do it? World Heavyweight Champion?
What do you think of George now I shake my head.
I want to go to my dressing room. I don't
want to tell him what George has taught me, that
too many victories weaken you, that the defeated can rise
(51:21):
up stronger than the victor. But I take nothing away
from George. He can still beat any man in the
world except me. Besides, I already told them, and I
already told you.
Speaker 5 (51:38):
Didn't you hear me? I said I was the greatest.
Speaker 18 (52:00):
Umble is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
Rumble is written and hosted by Zarren Burnett. The third
produced and directed by Julia Chriscau. Sound design 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,
(52:22):
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 Chriscau. Casting support services provided by Breakdown Express.
(52:47):
Episode thirteen cast Abraham Amka as Muhammad Ali. If you
like the show, let us know, like subscribe, leave five
star reviews. It really helps. Also check out our show
notes for a full list of reference materials.
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