Types of African Masks: The Five Formats That Explain Almost Everything
Face, helmet, crest, shoulder, structure. The five types of African masks, what each one was for, and how to tell which you are holding.
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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…
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Boa Masks: The War Face Whose Actual Job No One Can Agree On
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Most masking traditions documented in this book carry at least a working consensus on what their masks were for, even when the deeper symbolism stays contested. The Boa of the northern Democratic Republic of…
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What Are African Masks Made Of? The Materials Behind the Meaning
Wood, brass, ivory, hide, cowries and kaolin. What African masks are made of tells you who made them, for whom, and whether they ever danced.
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Vuvi Masks: A Mask for Every Spirit, a Name for Every Mask
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 treat individual masks as interchangeable instances of a single type. The Vuvi of central Gabon organized theirs differently: each bwiti association mask apparently carried its own specific…
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Nigerian Masks: The Masquerade Traditions Almost Nobody Can Name
Ijele, Agbogho Mmuo, Gelede, Egungun, Ekpo. A working guide to Nigerian masks, who made them and what each masquerade was built to do.
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Mano Masks: The Mask, Not the Man, Performs the Ritual
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 draw a sharp line between the performer and the thing performed. Few state it as directly as the Mano of Liberia and southernmost Guinea, whose masks represent…
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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…
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Ijo Masks: Water Spirits Who Lived Among Humans Before They Were Born
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 treat spirits as distant or purely supernatural. The Ijo of Nigeria’s Niger Delta describe theirs in almost domestic terms: water spirits, human in their strengths and weaknesses,…
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Mambila Masks: Justice, Hidden from Women, Kept in a Hut on Stilts
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,…
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Kurumba Masks: The Antelope Headdress a Dancer Should Not Be Able to Balance
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Most masking traditions documented in this book ask a dancer to carry weight, but the Kurumba of northern Burkina Faso built theirs around a headdress that, by the book’s own account, seems physically impossible…
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Grebo Masks: The War Face Built to Terrify, and the Chief Who Ruled Alone
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Nearly every people documented in this book’s Liberian section organizes at least part of village authority through the Poro society, the region’s dominant men’s institution. The Grebo, a little-known ethnic group of eastern Liberia’s…
