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- Convenor:
-
Charles Gore
(SOAS)
- Stream:
- Literature, media and the visual arts
- Location:
- G2
- Start time:
- 12 September, 2006 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel explores change and innovation in masquerade in the 21st century.
Long Abstract:
Masquerade and masking traditions in Africa have been an iconic subject of
African art studies throughout the 20th century and often have served to
underline historical continuities with a pre-colonial past. As such they have
been located at the centre of social life and action within local communities.
This panel explores ongoing innovation and change in masquerade traditions and
suggests that taken for granted paradigms as to their contexts of ideas and
practices need to be critically reassessed in the shifting circumstance of the
21st century. The rise of Pentecostal Christian and new Islamisation movements
have marginalised many masking traditions as bound up with a pagan past.
Despite the ending of some traditions of masquerade as a consequence of these
religious movements, this displacement has created new and diverse
possibilities so that masquerade remains a vital medium of creativity
and performance that offers counter-narratives of locality and the translocal.
Possibly space for further papers.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Will Rea (Leeds University)
Paper long abstract:
This paper will document and analyse the changing status of Egigun, a form of masquerade cognate with Egungun, in the Ekiti town of Ikole. The paper will consider the introduction of these masquerades in the early twentieth century and the changes that have occurred in the utilisation of masquerades through out the twentieth century. Through an analysis of aesthetic innovation, particularly associated with an increasing individuality this paper will document the way in which changing priorities, in masquerade, but also within the town, are given expression in the performance of certain Egigun. This in turn leads to a questioning of the incipient obsolescence of the technical uses of other masquerades in the town. These changes are staged against a backdrop of modernisation, and increasing Pentecostal activity, yet for many young men in Ikole the performance of at least one masquerade remains very much "the real thing".
David Pratten (Oxford University)
Paper long abstract:
Annang masking traditions have always been flexible and innovative. A vehicle of social hierarchy, inter-village union, regional trade, anti-colonial and anti-mission resistance, and modes of urban adaptation, masking has been a resilient and persistent idiom of aesthetic, sociality, and mobilization. These rich mask carving and performative traditions have been ossified in the literature from history, anthropology and art history alike. The temporarilty and trajectory of Annang masking traditions has been overlooked as a result. Recent developments point to a more thorough criminalization of masking traditions, especially the annual ekpo (ancestral) mask. Attempts by local governments to regulate the mask, including systems of licences which register once anonymous performers, have coincided with a marked concentration of the mask in the hands of healers, diviners and their families. In the face of opposition from the state and from mushrooming Pentecostal churches, however, masquerade performances continue within annual routines, as forms of collective and chieftaincy celebration and continue to assume innovative guises. While masquerade performance is sublimated within forms of everyday embodied practice, New Year 'cross-country' runs, and gang-style masquerades also combine with former traditions to populate the Annang social landscape.
Eli Bentor (Appalachian State University)
Paper long abstract:
Masquerade Politics in Contemporary Southeastern Nigeria
The current state of masquerade festivals in southeastern Nigeria cannot be understood simply in terms of the old trope of 'Vanishing Africa' or of the current one of the homogenizing effects of Globalization. Instead, a close reading of specific local circumstances reveals a complex web of conflicting trajectories.
The period following the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70) was marked by a deliberate revival of masquerade festivals and burial ceremonies by the Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria. During the 80's and early 90's masquerade performances flourished from rural festivals to the state-sponsored Mmánwu festival. This revival is now a thing of the past. In this paper I will focus on the reasons behind the current challenge to masquerade performances in the region.
1. As a result of growing competition between mainstream denominations and Evangelical churches, there is an increased animosity toward manifestations of 'traditional culture' in the public sphere.
2. With the return to democratic rule in Nigeria in 1999, the continuous fragmentation of political units has reached the level of the village-group. Until recently festivals often expressed a spirit of unity bringing together disparate elements of the community. Today, they are often the arena of strife as newly appointed 'Traditional Rulers' of government-approved splinter 'Autonomous Communities' vie for political influence.
3. Economic constraints have led to changes in burial practices. Lavish masquerade performances were a marked feature of second burial ceremonies. Today, the norm is to keep the body in a morgue and hold the burial within few weeks. The shorter period preclude the accumulation of resources and efforts needed for a large spectacle.
Masquerade performances become the bone of contention between different constituencies within local communities as they debate the continuous relevancy of rural communities in contemporary Nigeria. I will illustrate these processes with examples from specific ceremonies in the communities of Arochukwu, Ihechiowa, Ututu and Arondizuogu in Southeastern Nigeria.
Charles Gore (SOAS)
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers the ways in which masquerade performance has changed in the past fifteen years at Uga in Anambra state. Masquerade practice has been challenged by the evangelical churches that have proliferated throughout southern Nigeria during this period. Many notable masquerades have been burnt and their associations disbanded with many middle-aged members of the community withdrawing from participation in favour of church affiliations. This paper explores the dialectical interrelationships between two trends that have become more salient during this time. Firstly youth perform masquerade within regulated and policed public spaces, where the use of charms and other metaphysical powers are forbidden, to produce and valorise a localised Uga culture and identity (albeit that such performances are contested by many born again Christians within the community). Secondly youth masquerades are no longer suborned within the gerontocratic framing of more senior and powerful masquerades (that are in decline) and rather are utilised to assert a localised "modern" autonomous identity by and for youth. There is the replacement (and sometimes subversion) of the conceptual domains that the successful middleaged and elders construct and lay claim to through the spaces, practices and spectacle of Mmonwu performance.