Abomey Abomey Abomey is a city in the Zou Department of Benin. Abomey is also the former capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey ("c." 1600–1904), which would later become a French colony, then the Republic of Dahomey (1960–1975), and is the modern-day Republic of Benin. Abomey houses the Royal Palaces of Abomey, a collection of small traditional houses that were inhabited by the Kings of Dahomey from 1600 to 1900, and which were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985. The commune of Abomey covers an area of 142 square kilometres and as of 2012 had a population of
In Dahomey and Arthur Pryor's popular cakewalk number, "A Coon Band Contest". In this tribute to contemporary African-American music, the clash of the two tunes creates what has been called "a page of almost Ivesian dissonance". Grainger may have seen Cook's "In Dahomey" on stage in London in 1903. He started composing his rag that year, completing the score some six years later, in 1909). In 1894 the comedian Bert Williams was hired to play an African "native" at the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894, when the Dahomey natives who had been in the 1893 Chicago World's Fair were late reaching