CHAPTER TWO: FEMALE DANCERS The name explains itself,female dancers primary role is to be part of the dancing section of the group and participate either with choreographies during rumbas,collective choreographies with the band on sebene songs and generiques and their own choreographies which are often used to give reserve members of the backline some playing time,or one of the steps towards becoming a first team instrumentisttheir participation in congolese music covers most of its history and in this part we will talk about their conditions of work,their rights,their obligations,the advantages and the bad sides of being a female dancer in DRC and also their hidden roles-SALARY,RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONSdancers' payment often depends from the structure of payment of the group,but what is certain in most cases is that their salary is often smaller than those of men,and leaders use as reason the fact that they have to pay for their hair nails and so on so in average the dancers rarely topped the 100 dollars a month official salary,and sometimes an artist like koffi olomide when he had the strict monthly structure who would pay a certain amount for an already proven dancer joining his band as a sign on fee which could in some cases to 3000 dollars to sign a contract then 100 150 200 depending of how popular the dancer was before joiningthey have like their male colleagues of all the departments to be their at the rehearsals,concerts and reunions,and they have often a bigger right in benefitting treatment in case of illness then men,for two reasons,the first being the natural one that in african mentality women need a bit more care than men,then another one which will be explained later on in the post-THE PROS AND THE CONS OF BEING A DANCER IN DRCtwo of the biggest pros of being a dancer is a certain fame you can acquire via being seen on tv and the fact of travelling around the world if you manage to get into the list the biggest con by far is the fact that female dancers are extremely sexualised,they are seen by many people in the society like prostitutes and " a shameful job" and unfortunately the behavior of some of them on stage never helped get that bad reputation awaytherefore it leads to an "universal" rule in bands of drc,that they dont have the right to date male musicians of the band and have the obligation in most cases to move to another group or to retire from dancing to protect the relationshipleaders' reason behind that rule is that they claim its a threat for the group's harmony because for example a rift can start during a concert because a guy came to shower money on the female dancer and got too close physically or vice versa but in reality the reason is that most leaders love having dancers who dont have any engagement even outside the group so that they can use them for their sexual satisfactionand in most of the cases it works,because of the women's desperation for fame/luxury life but also because of the familial pressure i mention in the other post,very few dancers manage to say no and stand by their stanceand it has been going on for decades and while we could have have expected it to change,it still continues even down to the urban music generation,and sometimes on advice of elders,without giving names i will for example mention an elder telling ferre in front of me you see them dancers you can have good fun with them if you want you can even sleep two of them at the same time after concerts then outside of their roles for the pleasure of their leaders,they have an hidden role that i will talk about in the next partTHE HIDDEN ROLESthe oldest hidden role of female dancers is that they are sent to donors,either on the donor's demand in order to upgrade their involvement in donorship,or on mission to lure a uprising donor so that he concentrates most his money on that band and gives less to the othersthis role also has at times a hidden spiritual agenda,in the sense that dancers are sent to sleep with those donors to steal their aura and then enhance their leader's as he'd sleep with them afterfor those roles most of the times the reward is a very tiny part of the amount the leader himself gets,then the "basic luxury" comfort expected to be enough to satisfy young african women(house rent,foreign channels,nails and hair money...) and in some of the wildest cases of this it sometimes went as far as deaths of those donors for the spiritual reasons,which lead to strong anger for some of those dancers about being involved in such dark secrets with so little reward compared to the familial pressure where they have to sometimes pay scholarship of all their siblings and their children,their medical care and so on throughout their careerstwo other roles which have emerged of late are that they are sometimes told by leaders to go and get numbers of women in the crowd or sometimes on stage when a woman comes to salute/give money/take a selfie and then an artistic one which consists in some groups for the most experienced dancers to be able to tell guitarists that a string is off tune or things like that instead,or also the two dancers on the left and right of leaders have sometimes responsability to remind them of lyrics as sometimes they come freshly from a meeting,or straight from sex in bed and need a couple of songs to get their act together and remember the right order of their songs
Quote from: archos on October 11, 2024, 21:20CHAPTER TWO: FEMALE DANCERS The name explains itself,female dancers primary role is to be part of the dancing section of the group and participate either with choreographies during rumbas,collective choreographies with the band on sebene songs and generiques and their own choreographies which are often used to give reserve members of the backline some playing time,or one of the steps towards becoming a first team instrumentisttheir participation in congolese music covers most of its history and in this part we will talk about their conditions of work,their rights,their obligations,the advantages and the bad sides of being a female dancer in DRC and also their hidden roles-SALARY,RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONSdancers' payment often depends from the structure of payment of the group,but what is certain in most cases is that their salary is often smaller than those of men,and leaders use as reason the fact that they have to pay for their hair nails and so on so in average the dancers rarely topped the 100 dollars a month official salary,and sometimes an artist like koffi olomide when he had the strict monthly structure who would pay a certain amount for an already proven dancer joining his band as a sign on fee which could in some cases to 3000 dollars to sign a contract then 100 150 200 depending of how popular the dancer was before joiningthey have like their male colleagues of all the departments to be their at the rehearsals,concerts and reunions,and they have often a bigger right in benefitting treatment in case of illness then men,for two reasons,the first being the natural one that in african mentality women need a bit more care than men,then another one which will be explained later on in the post-THE PROS AND THE CONS OF BEING A DANCER IN DRCtwo of the biggest pros of being a dancer is a certain fame you can acquire via being seen on tv and the fact of travelling around the world if you manage to get into the list the biggest con by far is the fact that female dancers are extremely sexualised,they are seen by many people in the society like prostitutes and " a shameful job" and unfortunately the behavior of some of them on stage never helped get that bad reputation awaytherefore it leads to an "universal" rule in bands of drc,that they dont have the right to date male musicians of the band and have the obligation in most cases to move to another group or to retire from dancing to protect the relationshipleaders' reason behind that rule is that they claim its a threat for the group's harmony because for example a rift can start during a concert because a guy came to shower money on the female dancer and got too close physically or vice versa but in reality the reason is that most leaders love having dancers who dont have any engagement even outside the group so that they can use them for their sexual satisfactionand in most of the cases it works,because of the women's desperation for fame/luxury life but also because of the familial pressure i mention in the other post,very few dancers manage to say no and stand by their stanceand it has been going on for decades and while we could have have expected it to change,it still continues even down to the urban music generation,and sometimes on advice of elders,without giving names i will for example mention an elder telling ferre in front of me you see them dancers you can have good fun with them if you want you can even sleep two of them at the same time after concerts then outside of their roles for the pleasure of their leaders,they have an hidden role that i will talk about in the next partTHE HIDDEN ROLESthe oldest hidden role of female dancers is that they are sent to donors,either on the donor's demand in order to upgrade their involvement in donorship,or on mission to lure a uprising donor so that he concentrates most his money on that band and gives less to the othersthis role also has at times a hidden spiritual agenda,in the sense that dancers are sent to sleep with those donors to steal their aura and then enhance their leader's as he'd sleep with them afterfor those roles most of the times the reward is a very tiny part of the amount the leader himself gets,then the "basic luxury" comfort expected to be enough to satisfy young african women(house rent,foreign channels,nails and hair money...) and in some of the wildest cases of this it sometimes went as far as deaths of those donors for the spiritual reasons,which lead to strong anger for some of those dancers about being involved in such dark secrets with so little reward compared to the familial pressure where they have to sometimes pay scholarship of all their siblings and their children,their medical care and so on throughout their careerstwo other roles which have emerged of late are that they are sometimes told by leaders to go and get numbers of women in the crowd or sometimes on stage when a woman comes to salute/give money/take a selfie and then an artistic one which consists in some groups for the most experienced dancers to be able to tell guitarists that a string is off tune or things like that instead,or also the two dancers on the left and right of leaders have sometimes responsability to remind them of lyrics as sometimes they come freshly from a meeting,or straight from sex in bed and need a couple of songs to get their act together and remember the right order of their songsthank you for this.Elaborate the role of the chef of the dancers and her remuneration.I also noticed a lot of these dancers end up settling abroad.
Quote from: archos on October 11, 2024, 21:20CHAPTER TWO: FEMALE DANCERS The name explains itself,female dancers primary role is to be part of the dancing section of the group and participate either with choreographies during rumbas,collective choreographies with the band on sebene songs and generiques and their own choreographies which are often used to give reserve members of the backline some playing time,or one of the steps towards becoming a first team instrumentisttheir participation in congolese music covers most of its history and in this part we will talk about their conditions of work,their rights,their obligations,the advantages and the bad sides of being a female dancer in DRC and also their hidden roles-SALARY,RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONSdancers' payment often depends from the structure of payment of the group,but what is certain in most cases is that their salary is often smaller than those of men,and leaders use as reason the fact that they have to pay for their hair nails and so on so in average the dancers rarely topped the 100 dollars a month official salary,and sometimes an artist like koffi olomide when he had the strict monthly structure who would pay a certain amount for an already proven dancer joining his band as a sign on fee which could in some cases to 3000 dollars to sign a contract then 100 150 200 depending of how popular the dancer was before joiningthey have like their male colleagues of all the departments to be their at the rehearsals,concerts and reunions,and they have often a bigger right in benefitting treatment in case of illness then men,for two reasons,the first being the natural one that in african mentality women need a bit more care than men,then another one which will be explained later on in the post-THE PROS AND THE CONS OF BEING A DANCER IN DRCtwo of the biggest pros of being a dancer is a certain fame you can acquire via being seen on tv and the fact of travelling around the world if you manage to get into the list the biggest con by far is the fact that female dancers are extremely sexualised,they are seen by many people in the society like prostitutes and " a shameful job" and unfortunately the behavior of some of them on stage never helped get that bad reputation awaytherefore it leads to an "universal" rule in bands of drc,that they dont have the right to date male musicians of the band and have the obligation in most cases to move to another group or to retire from dancing to protect the relationshipleaders' reason behind that rule is that they claim its a threat for the group's harmony because for example a rift can start during a concert because a guy came to shower money on the female dancer and got too close physically or vice versa but in reality the reason is that most leaders love having dancers who dont have any engagement even outside the group so that they can use them for their sexual satisfactionand in most of the cases it works,because of the women's desperation for fame/luxury life but also because of the familial pressure i mention in the other post,very few dancers manage to say no and stand by their stanceand it has been going on for decades and while we could have have expected it to change,it still continues even down to the urban music generation,and sometimes on advice of elders,without giving names i will for example mention an elder telling ferre in front of me you see them dancers you can have good fun with them if you want you can even sleep two of them at the same time after concerts then outside of their roles for the pleasure of their leaders,they have an hidden role that i will talk about in the next partTHE HIDDEN ROLESthe oldest hidden role of female dancers is that they are sent to donors,either on the donor's demand in order to upgrade their involvement in donorship,or on mission to lure a uprising donor so that he concentrates most his money on that band and gives less to the othersthis role also has at times a hidden spiritual agenda,in the sense that dancers are sent to sleep with those donors to steal their aura and then enhance their leader's as he'd sleep with them afterfor those roles most of the times the reward is a very tiny part of the amount the leader himself gets,then the "basic luxury" comfort expected to be enough to satisfy young african women(house rent,foreign channels,nails and hair money...) and in some of the wildest cases of this it sometimes went as far as deaths of those donors for the spiritual reasons,which lead to strong anger for some of those dancers about being involved in such dark secrets with so little reward compared to the familial pressure where they have to sometimes pay scholarship of all their siblings and their children,their medical care and so on throughout their careerstwo other roles which have emerged of late are that they are sometimes told by leaders to go and get numbers of women in the crowd or sometimes on stage when a woman comes to salute/give money/take a selfie and then an artistic one which consists in some groups for the most experienced dancers to be able to tell guitarists that a string is off tune or things like that instead,or also the two dancers on the left and right of leaders have sometimes responsability to remind them of lyrics as sometimes they come freshly from a meeting,or straight from sex in bed and need a couple of songs to get their act together and remember the right order of their songsTalking about stealing aura's from businessmen. Is that also another reason, next to jealousy of bandleaders not wanting their musicians to sleep with the dancers ? Because I remember during Covid, Jordan Kusa in his live on Instragram with I think Lodia H2O talking about 'nikisi', indirectly that it attracted bad luck to bandmembers who were doing that. Going back to the part of 'stealing aura', is that not the reason why bandleaders act weird to influent donors and fans, or/also ignoring them when they are down, not giving shout-outs anymore until they pass away and then suddenly saying that they were important to the band, giving tribute, etc.
REHEARSALS4 dancersnow this is a very secret rule only known by a few people,then indirectly observed and noticed by band members,in many bands dancers have a silent obligation to stay after rehearsals so that leader picks "who he wants" that day,or a top donor,but its done in a subtle way its not like a strict order that everybody knows,there is specific days for that and if the dancer runs away when made aware its "her turn" she can be in troubleits not something which happens every single week but a lot of times in a year as i am told by a few dancers i got feedback from