West African masks and cultural systems

bibliographic database
Line

Book

Title:	West African masks and cultural systems
Editor:	Kasfir, Sidney L.
Year:	1988
Volume:	126
Pages:	252
Language:	English
Series:	Annalen. Wetenschappen van de mens (ISSN 0065-4124)
City of publisher:	Tervuren
Publisher:	Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale
Geographic term:	West Africa
Subjects:	masks masquerades
Abstract:	One of the aims of this collection of essays on masking in West Africa is to demonstrate the interrelatedness of form and meaning in African masks through the medium of performance. The unifying thread in the essays is the emphasis on mask events, including the whole cultural setting of a mask enactment, rather than masks, as objects of study. In the introduction, the editor integrates the deductive and the inductive approach by stating certain general propositions about masks for which the case studies serve as evidence. The case studies cover the Igala of central Nigeria (R.A. Sargent), the Ketu of western Yorubaland (E.D. Babatunde), the Okpella of southern Nigeria (J.M. Borgatti), the Idoma of the lower Benue region of Nigeria (S.L. Kasfir), the peoples of the Niger-Cross River hinterlands, southeast Nigeria (G.I. Jones; K. Nicklin and J. Salmons), the Mandinka of Senegambia (P.M. Weil), and the urban inhabitants of Freetown, Sierra Leone (J. Nunley). In addition, there is a paper on the acoustic aspects of masking (E. Lifschitz), and two papers committed to a comparative framework for the interpretation of mask enactments (A.D. Napier; E. Tonkin).