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Bobo Masks: How the Bobo-Fing Cleanse a Village’s Mistakes With a Mask Called Dwo
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Among the Bobo, a mask is not primarily a portrait, a costume, or even a spirit’s dwelling place. It is closer to an instrument of debt repayment. The Bobo believe that human beings are…
Suku Masks: Royal Court Charms in the Southwestern Congo
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Most masks are built to move an audience through performance, through dance, through song. The most feared Suku mask was built to do the opposite. Kakuungu was not supposed to dance at all. Its…
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,…
Kongo Masks and Nkisi: The Same Container Can Heal You or Hunt You Down
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Several fetish or power-figure traditions documented in this book assign one carved form a single, fixed job. The Kongo, spread across three countries at the mouth of the Congo River, built a system where…
Nalu Masks: The Crocodile-Faced Guardian That Became a Show
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 have drifted, over time, from a role rooted in real fear or real danger toward one closer to entertainment. Few make that drift as explicit as the…