Orchestre Stukas
The Orchestre Stukas (also referred to as the Stukas Boys, the Stukas or the Stukas of Zaire) was a congolese soukous band of the 1970s. It was based in Kinshasa, Zaire (now DR Congo). At the apex of their popularity, the Stukas were led by singer and showman Gaby Lita Bembo.
History
The Stukas were founded by Alida Domingo in 1968. Since the band's early years, when the Stukas mostly played James Brown covers, two members of its personnel emerged as the most talented: singer Gaby Lita Bembo (who reportedly "set the audience on fire" with his on stage dancing) and guitarist Samunga Tediangaye, nicknamed "the professor". Also acclaimed guitarist Dodoly (nicknamed "the sewing machine" for his high speed solos) began his career in Stukas before his successful experience in Bozi Boziana's Anti Choc.
While great soukous bands such as Zaïko Langa Langa, Bella Bella or OK Jazz competed with each other for the favors of the Kinshasa youth, Stukas deliberately played in the outskirts, for the people in the suburbs, who could hardly afford going to the venues downtown to see musical shows. In the 1970 they already had a relatively large number of followers, so that they were invited by television channel Voix du Zaire to play in their shows. They became so pupular that the Zairean authorities eventually put pressure on Voix du Zaire to let the Stukas appear on TV on a daily basis, because their shows helped "keep the children out of the streets". The Stukas also became the top band of the "Para fifi" club, one of the most important venues of Kinshasa.
Stukas (film)
Stukas is a 1941 Nazi propaganda film, directed by Karl Ritter and starring Carl Raddatz, which follows three squadrons of Luftwaffe dive-bomber (Stuka) flyers.
Plot and themes
The plot largely alternates between combat and lulls in combat, with the exception of two narratives. In one, three of the flyers who have been shot down behind enemy lines make their way back to the German position, finally succeeding after one of them manages to talk a French unit into capitulating. In the other, a shell-shocked flyer whose doctor has prescribed "a profound experience" recovers the will to fight when he hears "Siegfried's Rhine Journey" during a performance of Wagner's Götterdämmerung at the Bayreuth Festival. (He has a flashback to his commander and the chief medical officer playing the same passage four-handed on the piano.) The film ends with them in flight on their way to attack England.
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