ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on fieldwork with dancers and musicians conducted in Cotonou, Benin. It analyses these 'movements of memory' as postcolonial exchanges between and across the language blocks created through different European imperial powers, prompted by decolonial global politics, most notably, the Cold War. A sense of lived history peaked with Boncana Maiga's display and use of the flute that the Cuban government had presented him when he had been a student of music in Havana, funded by the Malian government. A particular musical heritage was being celebrated and reclaimed by Africans, through dance as well as music. The Afro-diasporic music styles that developed in twentieth-century Cuba and their corresponding social dances, from rumba to mambo to what is called salsa, have been 'returning' to West and Central Africa since at least the 1920s. Amongst Beninese dancers and musicians circulates a discourse involving salsa, slavery and the Afro-Cuban and vodoun divinity called Chango.
