possessed a restricted and abstract power, limited by the borders of African spaces and practices, was based on the evocation of the African past and stressed the existence of a history that ensured the long autonomy and hegemony of Africans. However, the maintenance of these kings and queens, political leaders, but above all links with their history and religion, resembled the past and did not lose sight of the present, nor the future: the 'real' acts, accompanied by the constant presence of music and dance, appear as means of ensuring the integration of Africans in Portuguese cultural practices.  
A long description of 1731, reported by an ecclesiast, which took place in the city of Braga in northern Portugal entitled, Bayle dos Negros, highlights the complexity of articulating the African cultural and identity aspects in Portuguese religious events. It also reveals the integration of other communities settled in Portugal. The description of this particular procession, an unholy parade that follows the religious gathering, gives an account of the prominent place given to the king and queen of Angola, accompanied by many participants who presented their dances and sang their oath of allegiance simultaneously to the Church and its Angolan sovereigns. African singing, dancing, historical memory and identity sentiment characterized this event, associated with the 'language of black people' and the Portuguese religious organization, highlighting the festive syncretic forms that marked Portuguese society.  
Also, the parties and public and private dances centred on the character of the king and the kingdom of the Congo were frequent in the nineteenth century, as reported in Portuguese periodicals. This tradition was reported in the Jornal do Comércio (1860), which described a ball of