https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0200-3224
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ABSTRACT
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cotonou, Benin, the essay explores historical and contemporary dynamics pertaining to the different ways in which salsa is creatively appropriated in Benin. The analysis of the specificities of Beninese salsa dialogues with the ever-growing body of literature interrogating the ability of the Black Atlantic heuristic to grasp South-South transatlantic cultural circulations. I thereby redefine the transatlantic affiliations that are perceptible through the beninisation of salsa as emanating instead from what I call the Creole Atlantic.
Acknowledgements
The research fieldwork trips to Benin have been made possible by the ERC funded project Modern Moves (2013–2018) based at King‘s College London and directed by Ananya Kabir, whom I thank for her advice on previous drafts of this essay. I am also very grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments to improve the essay.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on Contributor
Elina Djebbari is an ethnomusicologist and anthropologist, currently senior researcher for the ERC funded project MUSICOL (2019–2024) led by Prof Jann Pasler at Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. She was previously postdoctoral research associate within the ANR-FAPESP funded project Transatlantic Cultures at Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 University and the ERC funded project Modern Moves directed by Prof Ananya Kabir at King’s College London (2013 –2018). Her research deals with the transatlantic circulations of Caribbean music and dance in postcolonial Africa.
ORCID
Elina Djebbari http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0200-3224
Notes
1 Built between 1910 and 1935, the Great Mosque architecture not only testifies to the return of freed slaves from Brazil but also to the intense circulations of people along the coastal cities of the Slave Coast region. Indeed Afro-Brazilian craftsmen from Lagos erected the Mosque; Kowalski Oshineye, “Migrations, Identities,” 134.
2 Gilroy, Black Atlantic.
3 See Chasteen, National Rhythms; Waxer, Situating Salsa; Hutchinson, Salsa World; Skinner, “Salsa Class”; Kabir, “European Salsa,” “Hips don’t lie”; Bosse, “Salsa Dance”; Pietrobruno, Transnational Moves; Hosokawa, “Orquesta de la Luz”; O’Brien “Negotiating Salsa”; Carwile, “Clave,” 187.
4 Washburne, “Clave”; Carwile, “Clave,” 186.
5 Quayson, Oxford Street; Carwile, “Clave”; Kabir, “Afro-Latin.”
6 Kabir, “Afro-Latin.”
7 I carried out this research in the frame of my postdoctoral research position within the ERC funded project Modern Moves (2013–2018) based at King’s College London and directed by Professor Ananya Kabir with whom I did most of the fieldwork presented here. Therefore, I sometimes use “we” to refer to this collaboration. The fieldwork and archives research in Benin were done around the time of the Benin International Salsa Festival editions, of which we attended three successive ones (February 2015; January-February 2016; January-February 2017).
8 I find useful to apply the term “creative appropriation” to salsa dancing in Benin in the sense given by Peter Manuel for whom “appropriation is a socio-musical process, involving the resignification of the borrowed idiom to serve as a symbol of a new social identity”; Manuel, “Creative Appropriation,” 274.
9 Clifford, Routes.
10 Zeleza, “Rewriting,” 36.
11 Goyal, “Africa”; Piot, “Aporias,” 155–156; Naro et al., Cultures; Wheat, Atlantic Africa; de Alencastro, South Atlantic; Ferreira, Cross-Cultural Exchange; Agudelo et al., Autour de l’Atlantique Noir; Popescu, “Margins”; Dorsch, “Black or Red”; Hofmeyr, “Forging.”
12 Armitage, “Red Atlantic”; Patel, “Re-imagining”; Cañizares-Esguerra and Breen, “Hybrid Atlantics.”
13 Law and Mann, “West Africa.”
14 Dorsch, “Indépendance Cha Cha,” 132; Shain, “Cubanismo,” 86–87; White, “Congolese Rumba,” 669–670. “GV Series” is the name given to the Gramophone records produced in Europe and the United States between 1933 and 1958 and specifically exported to Africa; White, “Congolese Rumba,” 669.
15 Denning, Noise Uprising, 168.
16 Collins, “Decolonisation”; Dorsch, “Indépendance Cha Cha,” 132; Shain, “Cubanismo,” 86–87; White, “Congolese Rumba,” Rumba Rules.
17 Shain, “Cubanismo.”
18 Mazzoleni, Afro-Cubain, 6.
19 For an overview of the history of popular music in Benin, see Mazzoleni, Afro-Cubain.
20 Ibid., 13.
21 Ibid. Florent Mazzoleni notes how Benin’s record production was one of the most prolific of the continent in relation to its population, arguing that “the resulting musical melting pot remains unparalleled in Africa”; Ibid. 7.
22 Interview, Cotonou, 28 January 2017. All translations from French to English in the essay are mine.
23 Apart from these diplomatically orchestrated visits, other famous salsa artists such as Celia Cruz or Johnny Pacheco also toured in Benin in the 1970s and met with huge success as well; Mazzoleni, Afro-cubain, 15.
24 “Fin du séjour en république populaire du Bénin de l’orchestre Aragón de Cuba,” Ehuzu, 4 November 1977, 1, National Archives of Benin, Porto-Novo.
25 “L’international Aragon Orchestra au Bénin. Des maîtres incontestables de la musique afro-cubaine”, Ehuzu, 25 October 1977, 3, National Archives of Benin, Porto-Novo.
26 Translated from Spanish by the author (original quote: “Estos compañeros vienen de muy lejos, el joven representante de ellos bien decía, que ellos habían nacido de África y que volvían a ella”). Archives of the Ministry of foreign affairs in Havana, Cuba, box Benin, decada 1970–1983, ordinario 1.
27 Although I won’t expand on this topic here, Cold War politics were indeed key in sustaining the success of Cuban music in postcolonial Africa; see Djebbari, “Guerre froide.”
28 Moehn, “New dialogues,” 175. In the case of the education programmes established between Cuba and Mozambique, Hauke Dorsch recalls:
ideas of an Afro-Atlantic connection informed these education programs. It is important to note, that Fidel Castro and other Cuban politicians and intellectuals justified the Cuban activities in Africa not only with Cuban foreign political or economic interests and references to Socialist Internationalism, but also with the common historical experience of slavery and colonialism that African and Latin American countries shared. They would also refer to the debt Cuba owes Africa because of African slaves’ contributions to Cuban culture and in building the country. Castro went even further along this line by referring to the “common blood” of Cubans and Africans. Dorsch, “Black or Red,” 295.
29 Following on our joint fieldwork, Ananya Kabir has shown how the memory of the slave trade is performed through dance in Benin, and through salsa in particular, see Kabir, “Afro-Latin.”
30 Kétou is a secondary town in the southeast of Benin, see more about it in the next section of the essay.
31 Interview, Cotonou, 12 February 2015.
32 Ciarcia, Oubli.
33 Forte, “Remembering,” 123.
34 Ibid., 124.
35 Ciarcia, Oubli.
36 The information presented in this section compiles the arguments given by musicians and dancers during formal and informal interviews in the field between 2015 and 2017.
37 Some of these similarities have been investigated by anthropologists such as Roger Bastide or Pierre Verger. Pierre Verger’s work is well known in Benin; some of his photographs demonstrating these diasporic affiliations are, for instance, presented in the History Museum of Ouidah held in the former Portuguese fort. Agbadja is a traditional music and dance genre mainly performed in the southern part of Benin.
38 Interview, Cotonou, 29 January 2017.
39 Interview, Cotonou, 12 February 2015.
40 For more information on Boncana Maïga and his studies in Cuba, see Djebbari, “Guerre froide.”
41 Africando, Ketukuba, Discograph/Syllart Productions, 2006.
42 Apter and Derby, Activating the Past.
43 Otero, Afro-Cubans.
44 Such neologisms that play with the word “salsa” associated with local music genres have been experimented in other African countries, such as in Senegal with mbalsa for salsa-mbalax or in Ghana with salzonto for azonto-salsa; Shain, “Cubanismo”; Carwile, “Salzonto.” The gota drum is specific to the music genre called tchinkoumé in the Savalou region. Played alongside bells, rattles, and water drums, the gota drum is made of a big emptied calabash gourd which the musician beats the opening with a piece of animal skin. The water drums tohoun are made of half-calabashes sitting in water-filled larger half-calabashes which are hit with a sandal or other handy item.
45 The information presented in this section comes from a long interview we had with Codo in Cotonou at TBB studio on 17 February 2015. We also consulted some documents pertaining to the Salgota Festival that he brought with him for us to consult. Excerpts translated from French to English by the author.
46 Several musicians follow the salgota trend in Benin, such as Charly Guédou for instance.
47 Martin, “Musical Heritage.”
48 Shain, “Cubanismo.”
49 Poda, “Musiques actuelles.”
50 This account does not include the salsa dance classes that are also offered in Cotonou’s dance schools. It concentrates on the clubs that hold weekly classes and regular dance parties and which function as associations with members “belonging” to the club.
51 As far as I can assess from my observations in the field conducted between 2015 and 2017, Club Shango attracts more numerous dancers compared to the other clubs.
52 The New York or “On-2” style, which indicates the break on the second beat rather than on the first beat (as in the “On-1” Los Angeles style), has not yet spread well on Beninese salsa dance floors, although some advanced dancers show their interest in improving their skills in the kinetic understanding of this specific time frame. For more detailed information on the musical and kinetic implications of these two different timings, see Hutchinson, “Mambo on 2,” 132–133; McMains, Spinning Mambo, 150; O’Brien, “Negotiating Salsa” and Simpson-Litke and Stover, “Theorizing.”
53 Some also call it “traditional salsa.”
54 Interview, Cotonou, 5 February 2016.
55 Interview, Cotonou, 29 January 2017.
56 I fully explore these differientated “temporalities of appropriation” between salsa music and dance elsewhere; see Djebbari, “Temporalities.”
57 Interview, Cotonou, 29 January 2017.
58 Rock and roll is also very much part of the Beninese salseros’ kinetic repertoire and it is not unusual to observe some rock and roll interpretations of salsa songs during an event.
59 For more information on the festival and his founder as well as an account of previous editions we attended in 2015 and 2016, see Kabir, “Afro-Latin.”
60 Let us note that the Beninese and other West African women performing at the festival always wore a pair of mini-shorts underneath their skirts when they chose an outfit close to the ones of the archetypal female salsa dancers. Through the choice of costume we can thus also perceive some broader local cultural stances as related to religious and social codes.
61 Interview, Cotonou, 31 January 2017.
62 I thank Bienvenu Azonhin for his patient explanations during the original interview and a later follow-up as well as for having been so welcoming to us during each of our stays in Benin.
63 Interview, Cotonou, 31 January 2017. Following quotations are from the same interview.
64 Mudimbe, Invention.
65 For a critique of the tropes of “African dance” conveyed by colonialist and early anthropological discourses, see Lassibille “Danse africaine.”
66 Yoruba deity worshipped in vodoun religious practices, Sakpata is linked to diseases like smallpox.
67 The importance of video watching on the shaping of the salsa scene in Benin is beyond the scope of the essay but it is an important aspect on which I work extensively, see Djebbari, “Dance.” Interestingly, Terry Tauliaut and his dance partner Cécile Ovide were the international guests at the 2019 edition of the Festival.
68 More particularly to the famous duo of dancers called Mambo Aces, see McMains, “Spinning Mambo,” 273, 323.
69 Mbembé, “African Modes.”
70 Bosse, “Salsa Dance,” 61.
71 Carwile, “Clave,” 193.
72 Collins, “Decolonisation”; Carwile, “Clave,” 185; Manuel, “Creative Appropriation”; Matory, “English Professors,” 97; Piot, “Aporias,” 163.
73 Kabir, “European Salsa.”
74 Matory, “Afro-Atlantic.”
75 Hannerz, Transnational Connections; Appadurai, Modernity.
76 Noel, Black Religion, 172.
77 For further discussion on this point, see Kabir, “Decolonizing.”
78 Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 2.
79 In the same line, notions such as “black music,” while still quite a vivid label, has been highly criticised for the essentialism and musical inaccuracies it conveys; see Tagg, “Open Letter.”
80 When mapping the space of the South Atlantic in the eighteenth century, navigators and geographers included Senegambia and the Gulf of Guinea in what they called the “Ethiopic Ocean,” in order to clearly distinguish it from the North Atlantic navigation streams; see de Alencastro, South Atlantic.
81 Law and Mann, “West Africa,” 310; see also Otero, Afro-Cubans, 115–116.
82 Hall, “Créolité,” 14–15.
83 On creolisation as processes of cultural innovation under specific conditions, see, among others, Mintz and Price, Anthropological Approach; Trouillot, “Culture.”
84 Chivallon, “Relecture,” 367. Translated from French by the author.
85 Amselle and M’Bokolo, Ethnies.
86 Amselle, Logiques métisses; Branchements.
87 Mbembé, “African Modes,” 264.
88 Piot, “Aporias,” 156.
89 Cañizares-Esguerra and Breen, “Hybrid Atlantics,” 599; Thornton, Africa; Piot, “Aporias”; Matory, “Afro-Atlantic.”
90 See Noel, Black Religion, 176.
91 So far, for mainland Africa, this has been mainly done in South Africa, Sierra Leone and Liberia; see Cohen, “Creolization”; Martin, “Peut-on parler”; Gaulier, “Musique”; Bilby, “Gumbe”; Little, “Significance.” For instance, scholars have indicated how in nineteenth century Sierra Leone and Liberia, similar processes to those that occurred in the plantations of the New World led to the formation of creole societies in mainland Africa: see Bilby, “Gumbe,” 147; Jackson “Trans-Atlantic journey”; Little, “Significance,” 318.
92 Wheat, Atlantic Africa, 220.
93 Berlin, “Atlantic Creoles.”
94 However, it has to be stated that the creolisation processes did not stop along the coast but also penetrated hinterland. Charles Piot has brilliantly demonstrated how the development of exchanges along the West African coast in the early sixteenth century have not only been factors of change along the littoral but also in the hinterland, as he analysed it in the case of the Kabre region located in today’s Togo. He writes:
those processes of transculturation, of ceaseless cultural exchange and cross-fertilization, of improvisational mixing and hybridity that are produced by histories of dislocation throughout the diaspora have also defined cultural process in places like Kabre at least since the advent of the slave trade, if not before; “Aporias,” 163.
95 Law and Mann, “West Africa,” 310.
96 In this light, I follow Mann according to whom,
the scholarship on Atlantic history and culture reminds us of the need to remember the longue durée and look not only at the eras of slavery and abolition, but also at the ongoing reconstitution of the diaspora. The contributions of Africa and persons of African descent to the wider Atlantic story lie in this more modern period as much as in the earlier one. “Shifting paradigms,” 16.
97 Martin, “Imaginary Ocean.”
98 Ibid., 73.
99 Palmié, “Afterword,” 406.
100 Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 16; Ciarcia, Oubli.
101 Apter and Derby, Activating the Past.
102 Collins, “Jazz Feedback.”
103 Hannerz, “World in Creolization.”