How to Decode your Traditional African Mask | African Masks Q&A
I can help you learn how to decode your traditional African mask with this African Masks Q&A video.
About this video
You own an African mask and you don’t know what it is, where it came from, or whether it should even be in your home. This video answers all of it.
I walk you through: – How to tell if your mask is decorative, ceremonial, or ritual (look at the back first) – How to trace the tribe and region it comes from – The three energies every African mask carries — the material, the maker, and the activation – Why "ugly looking" masks are often the most powerful ones – What it actually means when a mask "comes alive" or "demands offerings" – Whether your mask is worth anything (and why I’m not the right person to price it)
Africa is a continent. I know this seems obvious, but it is the single most important thing to remember when you try to understand a mask. We are a continent of many nations, many languages, many tribes, and many spiritual traditions. Masks are indigenous to specific peoples. They are made for specific reasons. A mask from the Bini Kingdom does not mean what a Senufo mask means. A Yoruba Gelede mask does not perform the same function as a Dogon Kanaga.
There is no such thing as ‘a generic African mask’. The phrase itself is a problem. It collapses thousands of distinct traditions into one imagined object, and it is part of the reason so many masks end up misunderstood, mishandled, or mounted in the wrong rooms.
So when you ask, ‘what kind of mask do I have?’, you are really asking three different questions at the same time:
What was this mask made for? Where does it come from? What does it carry?
Send a photo of your mask to michael@sevics.africa and I’ll help identify it.
Get the E-book, Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks—a book that reveals the untold spiritual, cultural, and ancestral secrets etched into every curve and pigment of African masks: –
Keep exploring
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Watch more on SEVICS | AFRICAN MASK TV.