Steve Daly of Lancaster, UK. ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) wrote: 2/11/2001, 10:01 PM
Not so much a story as a request. I'm just atempting to find out about the Cuban slave activity "Mani". It was a fight "game" with rhythmic accompaniment, mainly using punching and evasion... or so I've read. I have not been able to find any significant references to it. Slave communities around the Caribean had at least 3 identifiable fight games: Mani; Lagya in Martinique; and Capoeira in Brazil. While Capoeira, in its modern form, is quite well known, the others are not.
Also, as all cultures develop methods of training fighting skills (probably), it seems reasonable to assume there were African methods which were carried with enslaved people. However, traditional African methods seem to have no studies that I have been able to trace.
All the web searches that I've tried produce only references to Amistad sites, with one long quote from the Barber book.

Can anyone help?