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African Ceremonial Masks: What Actually Happens During the Ritual
Before the mask ever touches a face, something else happens first. A man stops eating. He sits alone in a room for days. An elder speaks words over cloth and wood that no outsider is allowed to hear. This is the part most people miss when they picture african ceremonial masks. They imagine the dance,…
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…
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,…
Bassa Masks: The Gela Dancer Who Performs Feminine Grace for an All-Male Society
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 use a mask’s design to project fear, authority, or ancestral weight. The Bassa of Liberia’s central coastal region built a tradition around the opposite register entirely: a…
Mossi Masks: What the Conquered People Kept When the Rulers Took the Statues
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Most of the masking traditions covered on this site emerged from societies without a strong central government, villages, clans, and secret societies filling the gap a king or a unified state might otherwise occupy….