New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → “Lulua” is not really the name of one people. It is an umbrella term for a large number of heterogeneous groups who settled near the Lulua River, between the Kasai and Sankuru rivers in…
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Most masks documented in this book serve either war or peace, aggression or reconciliation, rarely both at once. The Bete of Côte d’Ivoire, roughly 600,000 people living between the Akan groups to the east…
Most masking traditions in this book reserve their most demanding, most elaborate objects for senior, initiated men, the people with the most standing to carry them. The Bijago, off the coast of Guinea-Bissau on an archipelago of some thirty islands, built the opposite hierarchy: their heaviest masks are worn by the age group not yet…