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Traditional African Masks: everything you should know (part 2)
From my book, Within Carved Lines What is the mask for? I grew up knowing what masquerade means, and now I watch the objects of that tradition sell for sums that could transform the villages they came from. The mask was made to hold a community together, to call the ancestors back, to teach the…
Duma Masks: The Boatmen’s Faces Whose Sacred Past Went Undocumented
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 carry a clear, unbroken line from sacred origin to present-day use. The Duma, or Aduma, boatmen of Gabon’s Ogooue River, present a harder case: their masks are…
Bembe Kitebi Figures: Ancestors Who Punish as Well as Protect
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Several ancestor-figure traditions documented in this book carve a passive likeness meant to honor the dead. The Bembe, a small group of 60,000 to 80,000 people living on the plateaus north of the Congo…
Ngbaka Masks: Paired Ancestors Standing Guard Over the Same House
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Several masking traditions in this book represent a single ancestor or a single spiritual authority. The Ngbaka, spread across the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo and into the Central African Republic, carved theirs…
Zombo Masks: A Broken-Away Kingdom’s Fetish Figures and Charged Gongs
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 describe communities whose fortunes rose and fell with outside trade. Few trace that arc as cleanly as the Zombo, who broke away from the Kongo kingdom in…
Uncover the Mysteries of African Masks at Rituals
Somewhere in a living room in Berlin, or Brooklyn, or a quiet suburb in Surrey, an African mask hangs on a wall. The owner walks past it every morning. They bought it at an estate sale, or inherited it from a relative who did volunteer work in West Africa in the 1970s. They think it…