i had said months/years ago that i would do a topic of my experience,to explain how conflict of generation started in bcbg,how it evolved with time and the consequences
stay tuned,it should be good by tonight or tomorrow

Waiting anxiously.

Finally! I can't wait

as everybody knows,after wenge musica 4X4 split,jb mpiana will have on his side 90 per cent of the group,but quickly due to leadership issues and due to everygrowing list of concerts and tours a new recruitment is well needed
and this is why will be created the concept of PPU(president's protection unity),in other words a reserve section of wenge bcbg ready to step in when needed
singers jules kibens,rio de janeiro,chai ngenge,heritier,guitarists alba,zygal and sunda bass are among the first members and by 1999 most of that first crop of les PPU will become members of first team,with jb mpiana having then to hire new members to keep the concept of reserve team alive
the new generation of les PPU will be a mix between unproven musicians,few who could not make it in big groups and a good number of members of the collapsing wenge kumbela
and quickly they will start to impress in concerts whenever they are given a chance to showcase their talents
in 2001 while they are about to get a chance in the biggest stage of congolese music which is european tours,tensions start to appear between them and some of the older members who feel threatened
they will still be part of the humongous list of bercy concert and will shine there,and will be meant to record 6 songs together in the future group album anti-terro
but as the tour goes on tensions start to grow further and older generation convince the leader jb mpiana to let them remain in europe so that they can improve their looks and really feel the privilege of being in a big group,while in reality some hope that the young guys will disappear in "dreamland" europe but whenever wenge bcbg come back to europe they are around
in the meantime,in kinshasa,jb mpiana tasks gentamicine lisimo in who he senses good recruitment skills to find some other musicians(plus some who come individually for tests) who can fill in for the now europe-based ppu and who can start concerts and get a chance to be discovered when the boss is on stage in a one by one impro on an old wenge musica song
and when in late 2002 early 2003 jb mpiana returns to kinshasa on his own for a playback and a concert,he trusts that new team to step in quickly and honour contract and go back to europe ASAP and that new group will shine so much that out of excitment some chegues will remove their coats or shoes and give it to the musicians and most of them will go home with 100 150 dollars which is for them,and at that time,a lot of money
the news of their stellar performance reaches the older generation and when jb goes again on his own to perform at fikin the young guys shine again and to his surprise the old generation all ask to return after hearing again the news,and they will all return with the plan to prepare planned concert at zenith in kinshasa while jb initially wanted them to prepare concert in europe with the europe ppu counting on the motivation of the ppu after experiencing the" dream of europe" for a good while to produce exciting choreographies for the concert
and while the europe PPU are waiting for the group's return for the big concert,the old generation aka armee rouge will face stiff competition from the PPU of kin,so much that in a concert in brazzaville,they'll start concert from the first second instead of letting the young guys start and when jb wants to start the traditional PPU song gentamicine tells him in his ears that the young guys had been banned from stage so some event went outside hall to smoke or do matolo and it makes jb so angry that he literally orders the whole group of armee rouge except the keyboard players to leave stage and the PPU of kin completed the 2 remaining hours of concert with jb taking few seconds between songs to give them tips for how to play songs they are normally not used to sing
when the group is back in kinshasa,the chief of discipline seguin tries to suspend genta but the suspension is lifted the same day when jb is informed
while they are few weeks away from zenith,the group is denied visas and informed they will serve a long europe ban due to ngulu affair,so now more than ever the two groups will be forced to coexist and jb mpiana will hold a reunion to try to solve definitely thoses issues between the two generations
and as a symbol he announces that the PPU of kin will participate to album anti-terro as well as refusing to go and perform at zenith with the europe PPU to avoid creating even more problems
it coincides with the period in which the older generation get really really close to him as they unite around him in his personal and professional tough times which are starting
the europe PPU who feel completely abandoned decide to record together having heard the PPU of kin will also record their own album and officially leave wenge bcbg,fearing they might have lost their songs to them since the group can not come to record in europe
during recording of anti-terro some little tensions will appear again as due to singer djino giving rude responses to sound enginner and arranger,guitarist pathy moleso when he asks to add some of the  remaining mabanga list of the instrumentists on their song and to punish them paty molesso decides to pretend their files have disappeared,and jdl who went back to kinshasa with him fully supports that idea,him who like maintaining the old wenge spirit of elders bullying younger ones
 and one year or so after recording of album,many fans start to protest against older generation,in an operation started by people from europe(including the man who writes this topic lol),with the idea to kick out majority of the older generation in order to compete better with the two rival groups wenge maison mere and quartier latin(my idea was to separate the groups,the older for the boring VIPs,the younger for the public concerts for example)
tutu caludji who feels he could get his position safe by appearing like a mentor to the young generation starts on his own to come much earlier at concerts and sing with the younger generation and asking to fans to clap for them but its not well seen by some other guys who will use it to unsettle him in the group until he leaves,while they do everything they can to brainwash their leader that he should only trust them off and on stage since the younger ones never really proved him they love him,while they stuck by his side in good and bad moments
genta who openly sides even more with the younger generation advises them not to go for  clash with the older anymore so that they can more easily break barriers to first team
and it is what start to happen,with a couple of events jb will use to try solve for ever the conflict
in fact,in a public concert,he'll make sure the traditional impro song of the young guys is three times longer than usual in order to please fans but when the older guys step in again they are heavily booed and he decides to restart the impro of younger guys then call all bcbg musicians on stage and ask them to hold each other by the hand and insists there is only one BCBG,not two rival groups of one same leader
few days/week after,protests will reach a whole new level with fans literally throwing stones and wood at some of the guys and physically assaulting them and when a big stone is thrown on stage for the first time during jb's presence,jb decides singlehandedly to stop concert and go back home and says if fans cant show minimum respect to their artists despite disagreement they are not true fans
he will from then make a radical decision to stop public rehearsals to protect his group members, one will himself once have to hold an angry fan who wanted to assault kibens and asks him"if you have a brother who works and did nothing particularly wrong,will you find his boss fair if he fires him?" and the guy responds no
in the meantime rival groups make heavy attacks towards the group and jb will use it strategically in order to appease protests by claiming its fans of other artists who came to cause havoc because their own groups are in meltdown and they dont like how stable bcbg appears from the outside
and luckily for him it works wonders with the younger generations getting more and more time in concerts and makes a strong decision by taking the three most popular of them djino,fudji and abraham on the europe tour after ban and they are the ones who return with the most gifts
satisfied by the success and attitude of the younger guys,jb mpiana plans to record an album with songs of younger artists "to test them and see who deserves to participate on his solo album" but his idea does not go too well with older artists who already did not have enough songs on previous album quel est ton probleme,and to appease sulking musicians he decides to make it a complete group album soyons serieux but decides he wont make extra promotion efforts for any of the musician and not to participate in most songs because first he is unhappy with the continuous little conflicts but also he does not want to appear like "over promoting" one at expense of another
in other words like himself will explain he prefers a team of guys fighting for the common cause which is bcbg rather than a group with strong egos,promoted heavily by the boss but fighting for egoistic interests and he will also indirectly admit he is not too keen to promote too seriously musicians anymore after the way it ended with alain mpela and caludji who left him and went to be supported heavily by his enemy didi kinuani and that he does not want around him guys who think they are bigger than the group(EG djino's case)
album will be released and two years after there is another possibility of zenith in december of 2013 But it fails due to combattants pressure
and the possibility of another long europe ban threatens group's stability as european tours are vital for group members to near proper satisfaction to their needs
so in bcbg and most other groups,many artists start to ponder solo projects as plan b to hopefully earn similar money than on europe tours
jb thinking authorization to do solo albums in bcbg will avoid trouble keeps insisting that everybody has the right as long as its not behind his back,but one album will cause long term chaos in bcbg,the album passe en or jb himself decides to offer to  mignon abraham
in fact,not only will he give authorization but he'll fund many sessions and make sure abraham gets personal visas and quickly longterm european papers to go and record in europe also,and it will frustrate some of the older musicians while they do not know the other guys who had an album project were offered the same and chose to record in kinshasa and use the money elsewhere
and to make it worse,big majority of abraham's album will be done with younger guys and in order to unsettle abraham a bit,they secretly send their spy atshuda to follow closely abraham behind the scenes and they will get the info that he rehearses those songs of album withsome of the younger musicians and some guys of the usual private groups of musicians of big groups to work outside group rehearsals
and to influence jb they will transform it into abraham preparing a rebel group secretly,and insist so much that jb starts taking more time to fund him plane tickets or give him some money for studio
one event will massively help them as abraham who takes a couple of colleagues to a bar to meet donors is invited on stage by the interpretation group performing and invites his colleagues on stage aswell and it is reported to jb as him having taken musicians for a solo concert since it was a live concert and not a playback which was kinda normal
in the meantime,those influent older guys convince jb mpiana not to hurry for release since they have already received their money for songs,they are not especially craving song success to survive,also because younger guys have plans of solo career while they are loyal to him
so it ends up in several young guys leaving,but the conflicts seem to have been solved now as there is much more rotation on stage and much less conflict within the group and all are eager to make a positive impression to people with next album

Ehh So Emo has been right the entire time about the older generation.  So they're also partly to blame for the Europe ban by making the original ppu stay there. I've got a few questions was every single person from the first team targeted? Cause some older guys like Bikou, Richard mukena and co started leaving one by one was it due to fan pressure? I know Richard left cause of his relationship but did the fans pressure him too? And same with Bikou?

no,genta,chai and bikou had no problem,caludji aswell it was mainly targetting rio kibens jdl seguin and mukena a little bit
yeah somehow they play a good role aswell as the traditional dancers who disappeared after bercy

Thanks Archos for this topic, the older generation really killed Wenge BCBG and JB Mpiana and that's why I'm not a fan of BCBG. I dont like the ideology of the older generation. The PPUs were the future of the group and could have allowed JB to release very very very solid albums

Damn, so the older generation really has been holding JB and BCBG back. Maybe they're the reason his album releases felt less consistent since Internet, compared to their rivals who were dropping albums at least every 2 years during their prime.

Like I said EMO has been right with what he's been saying all these years

Rio, jdl, seguin have nothing more to offer. They should quit, atleast kibens is a good songwriter.i really hope the young generation is well represented in BDM.

I've been following this group for a while (like 3 years now) but last evening I finally got to join the Forum as an active member and I must say I appreciate most of the work posted here. Often informative and entertaining 

Reading this rather informative piece, I'm a bit nostalgic because I still have sort of never gotten over the Original Wenge Musica 4x4 Tout Terrain, Les Ange Adorables.  I really feel bad this group had to split. The INVINCIBLES of 4th Generation Congolese Rhumba. (I'm from Kenya though)

However after the split I found myself aligned to WENGE BCBG though I still rated and do like, rate and respect Werrason, Adolphe and Didier Masela

But every time I see how Wenge BCBG has sort of remained stagnant after the release of Titanic album. Yes there have been some good releases Like Tojours Humble and some good singles here n there,e.g  Mpunda, Je ne te Calcule pas but in all honesty...
I don't see any other BCBG team that will match the class and talent of the team that performed at BATACLAN in December 1998, which in my opinion is the best ever Wenge BCBG concert ever.

JB Mpiana
Alain Makaba
Blaise Bula
Roberto Ekokota
Alain Mpela
Aimelia Lyasse
Tutu Calluigi
Titina Mbwinga
Burkina Faso
Patient Kusangila

being the Core members, the key players.


This was the winning team, and I feel the day the first member left, I think it was Roberto "Concrete mixer" Ekokota albeit because of health issues left. The team has never been the same again.

if you guys notice well the pressure from fans generated 3 albums in 3/4 years,kipe ya yo,quel est ton probleme soyons serieux

no,genta,chai and bikou had no problem,caludji aswell it was mainly targetting rio kibens jdl seguin and mukena a little bit
yeah somehow they play a good role aswell as the traditional dancers who disappeared after bercy

How come chai and bikou have no problem but the others did? Tutu and genta I get cause they were pushing for the youngers to get heard. Even tutu said in an interview after he left that Jb choosing to keep kibens and co hurt bcbg one hell of a lot. The operation against those guys started after alain left right? Cause a lot of fans were super angry when he left.

Yeah alain's departure hurt bcbg fans a lot,chai was getting a bit of stick especially when bleaching started not to work perfect with him anymore plus his drinking and smoking habits,i remember a fan  shouting to him that he looked like he just got released from long term jail ,he was criticized for his looks and lack of skills but they respected him as a singer(until later on his singing changed aswell with excessive drinking but he "saved" it by  creating a style around it)
to explain better the situation around caludji kibens and co,it started with a series of tv interviews caludji was taking younger musicians on tv to along with blanchard mosaka,because roger was scared to side with the younger ones,then the spy of the other camp atshuda while rehearsing guantanamo with caludji and robinio mundibu before it was brought to bcbg,caught messages from people around kinuani to tutu and reported to the other guys who started slowly and surely getting it into jb's ears then at some point tutu happened to be at a same party as kinuani and went to salute him because he was with other donors who bcbg had no problem with but he could not skip him(on one or two occasions in the recent years you can see seguin saluting kinuani because he cant skip him aswell) and he knew it might be reported  by the guys like he was chating with kinuani and co and accepted his offer already
so he decided to anticipate  the situation by suspending jdl,kibens,rio and seguin for lack of discipline and poor performances but the mistake tutu did is that he went to decide it on his own,without jb's authorization,so it backfired on him like a disrespect of jb's authority(which is why he said in recent years that he should have handled things less agressive and maybe he could have stayed longer because he did not want to leave)

This topic made me think about this concert.

The public being happy with the PPU and not wanting JDL, Kibens, Chai (1:13) and JB Mpiana attacking Tutu Calugi (4:05)