Oro Society Helmet Mask (Magbo) of the Ijebu Yoruba: What It Was For and Why It Matters

Ijebu Yoruba | Nigeria | Judicial / Funerary

What was it for?

The Oro society brought together community leaders who rewarded good deeds, punished bad ones and presided over burials. Oro is best known through its sound, the roar of the bullroarer, which warned women and uninitiated men to stay indoors. Among the Ijebu Yoruba the society also used carved wooden helmet masks known as Magbo.

What does it look like?

A wooden helmet mask crowned by a superstructure of many figures. One example in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, carved by Onabanjo of Itu Meko around 1880 to 1910, shows thirteen figures, among them a mounted warrior, a nursing mother, a soldier and a palm wine tapper. The scene gathers a whole society into a single carving.

Why does it matter?

Oro shows that a masquerade society can be a public authority. Its leaders judged conduct, honoured the good, sanctioned the bad and saw the dead properly buried. The Magbo helmet brings that authority into view, presenting through its crowded figures the very community the society was charged with keeping in order.

One thing most people never know

Most people know Oro only as a sound in the night and assume it has no visible form at all. In fact the Ijebu Oro society also commissioned elaborate wooden helmet masks from named carvers, and some of them now sit in museum collections, where the figures on top can be studied closely.

Further reading: the source record for this entry.

This entry is part of the SEVICS Africa archive of 100 African masks. If you own a mask like this and want to know more about it, try our Mask Identifier.