African Mask Making | History, Meaning and Secrets of Traditional African Mask Exposed

New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Several masking traditions documented in this book tie their objects to ancestors, initiation, or entertainment. The Mambila, farmers and stockbreeders straddling the Cameroon–Nigeria border, built theirs around something more specific: an association called suaga,…

New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Many masking traditions documented in this book have drifted, over time, from a role rooted in real fear or real danger toward one closer to entertainment. Few make that drift as explicit as the…

New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → If you have already read this site’s piece on Suku masking, you may remember a mask called hemba, worn far to the west along the Kwango River, that has nothing to do with the…