When an African Mask has horns: Does it signify evil?

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 give masked performers real social authority, the power to enforce a rule, collect a debt, or settle a dispute. The Eket, an Ibibio subgroup of farmers numbering…

New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Many objects documented in this book carry ceremonial weight reserved for adults, initiates, or specialists. The Namji of northern Cameroon built theirs around a child’s plaything: a carved wooden fertility doll, given a name,…

New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → A people squeezed between two much larger, much more famous neighbors could easily end up as a footnote to both. The roughly 20,000 Yohure of central Côte d’Ivoire sit exactly in that geographic position,…

New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Several traditions documented in this book carve figures whose missing anatomy is the whole point, but the Dengese take the idea somewhere unusually literal. North of the Kuba kingdom in the Democratic Republic of…