The Benin Masks Festival attracts thousands of people every year. With roots in the voodoo inheritance, he brings together participants from various West African countries and promotes cultural tourism in the region.
The Zaouli Yellow Mask seems to smile, waiting. Only when the rhythm of the drums fills the air, the dancer Zaouli advances. The dance is demanding. The trunk should be quiet, only feet and legs move. And the movements should never be repeated. The Zaouli dance, traditional of Ivory Coast, is one of those who perform at the Benim Masks Festival in Porto Novo.
Rather, out of respect, no one saw the face behind the mask, considered sacred. But now, Oscar does not resist.
“Since I started wearing this Zaouli mask in 2021, there was a big change in my life. It was thanks to this mask that I came to Benin. And thanks to this mask, I flew to Morocco and many other places,” said the dancer Oscar Ue-Ba.
Oscar UE-BI left work as a welder to start training and launching in the new career. It may take a good years to improve the technique and the rhythm. Oscar’s family did not approve, at first, until he saw that the mask gives more money than a conventional job, even to the assistant who always accompanies the dancer Zaouli.
“Normally, when Zaouis dance, there are always two people. There has to be someone to accompany Zaouli. So that Zaouli can rest, I present comedy, musical comedy. And then Zaouis continue, that’s why I’m here,” the assistant explained, “explained the assistant Noel Toho Bi Irie.
The dance is made on funerals and other important celebrations. The masks represent ancestral spirits that guarded the communities and linked the living to the spirit world. With roots in Benim’s voodoo inheritance and the Ouidáh Voodoo Festival in January, the Porto Novo party is a strategy to continue to promote the country’s cultural tourism, which it seems, with good results.
“I think this brings together everyone, on all sides, and that’s what I think is beautiful right now. I think it’s important, in the world we live in, that there is something that unites us. And here, through dance, is a universal language, and that’s what we feel,” said the tourist Virginie Anou Pomares.
On a coast from which the transatlantic slave trade departed, the voodoo culture survived. In the 21st century, with participants from Benim, Nigeria, Togo, Ivory Coast, the festival wants to be celebrating the cultural heritage of West Africa.
