Many, many years ago I was listening to Ken Bruce on Radio 2 talking about broadcasts he’d been involved in which had included features which were unsuitable for radio. Not unsuitable in the sense of being in poor taste, but rather content which was entirely visual in nature and so would lose its impact when put on radio. Examples included breaking off from one programme to cover a fireworks display - turn your radios up to hear several minutes of explosions - and most farcical of all, a display by a team of jugglers. Question: if you juggle on the radio and no one sees you drop a ball or club, did it really happen?
In recorded music terms, the equivalent is the crediting of dancers on live albums. It’s fair enough given that they put in the time in rehearsal and on the day of the show, but unless they’re on a percentage of the royalties, I can’t see the point. But as curious as the process may seem, there are scenes where the presence of the dancer is as important to the musical ambience as as with any musician. No soukous gig is complete without the presence of dancers, who will invariably spend the whole show shadowing the vocalist. The dancers were mainly female, but not exclusively and in 1992, a group of celebrated soukous musicians including Pepe Kalle, Nyboma Mwan’Dido Danos Canta and Bopol Mansiamina came together to record a tribute album to midget dancer, Emoro, who had worked with Kalle and was clearly considered to be a major part of Kalle’s shows that he received front cover co-credits on a couple of Kalle’s mid-1980s albums. Pembe was written by Nyboma and provoked one of Peel’s familiar complaints about keyboard players on soukous records building up their roles more than desired. The one on the Hommage a Emoro album is credited merely as Tony, like he’s sitting in with The Fall for a week. On the whole though, I don’t think it’ll spoil the enjoyment too much.
Video courtesy of Bopol - Topic
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