Ralph Njoku: West African Masking Traditions and Diaspora Masquerade Festivals

[Toyin Falola]

Congratulations to Professor Ralph Njoku for his latest publication on masking traditions and masquerade festivals, an excellent book that appeared in the University of Rochester’s Series on Africa and the African Diaspora.

 

Thanks to a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation, it is both an open access book and an inexpensive paper edition. If you are interested in a free copy, the links are supplied below. No code is necessary! It's completely open access.  An inexpensive paperback for sale will be coming out soon--for people who would still like to have a print book. 

 

You can find it here (the digital repository for University of Rochester research):

 

http://hdl.handle.net/1802/35708

 

or here, in a collection showing the other books published through the pilot:

https://archive.org/details/sustainablehistorymonographpilot

or here, on JSTOR:

 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv114c79k

West African Masking Traditions and Diaspora Masquerade Carnivals: History, Memory, and Transnationalism on JSTOR  In the decades following the 1940s, there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in African-styled traditions and the influence of these traditions upon th... www.jstor.org

 

[Biko Agozino]

Thanks for sharing the link to the important work. The thought provoked by the book is why Africans continued to exclude women from initiation into the mask societies while the African diaspora have generally democratized the practice of 'playing mas' during carnival? Njoku attributed this discrimination to the false belief that women are more dangerous as witches than men who were respected as good wizards and who needed the mask to help them to balance the evil powers of women:

 "For example, among the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria (who are also found in the present-day Francophone Republic of Niger), the Gélédé masquerade purportedly honors the earth spirits and the ancestors, and celebrates “Mothers” (áwon iyá wá)—chief among them, the earth goddess, female spirits, and elderly women.2 The annual Gélédé (or Èfé) esta highlights the status of women and paci es their hypothetically dangerous mystical powers. As performers ascribe honor to women in a male-controlled society, the Gélédé, “the festival of supplication,” e ectively serves a purifying role in society."

This chauvinism may be part of the reasons why women are given less access to formal education in colonial and post-colonial Africa whereas the African Diaspora that democratized the practice of playing mask also recorded the equalization of formal education in gender terms and they are reaping the benefits in Human Development Index reports. 

Missing from the book is Nwando Achebe's excellent work on The Female King of Colonial Nigeria whose downfall during the women's war came about when she went beyond the seizure of the wives of other men like other Warrant Chiefs and started bringing out her own masquerade which was promptly confiscated by the men. She went to court to recover the masquerade and was forced to step down by the colonial officials who would not wait for an opportunity to promote patriarchy in the guise of public order.

Are there African societies that allow women to be initiated into the masquerade societies?

Biko

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[Patrick Effiboley]

Thank you professor Ralph Njuko for this masterpiece. We will enjoy reading it.

PE

Dr Emery Patrick EFFIBOLEY

Assistant Professor, 

Department of History and Archaeology, University of Abomey-Calavi 

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand,Johannesburg,(2014-2016) 

www.researchgate.net/Profile/Emery_Effiboley

 

--

[Ameh Dennis Akoh]

Thanks to Professor Ralph Njoku for the great work. Thank you
Professor TF for sharing. This is so useful to me.
Shalom.

Ameh

On 29/05/2020, 'Patrick Effiboley' via USA Africa Dialogue Series

<usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> Thank you professor Ralph Njuko for this masterpiece. We will enjoy reading
> it.PE

> Dr Emery Patrick EFFIBOLEYAssistant Professor, Department of History and

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/2028631536.918659.1590789194598%40mail.yahoo.com.
>


--
Ameh Dennis Akoh, Ph.D.
Professor of Drama & Critical Theory
Faculty of Humanities
&
Dean, School of Postgraduate Studies
Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu-Alike (AE-FUNAI)
PMB 1010, Abakaliki
Ebonyi State
Nigeria
Alternate Email: ameh...@yahoo.co.uk, ameh...@funai.edu.ng
+2348035992490, +2348050293410
Website: http://www.funai.edu.ng/

“We ought not to court publicity for our virtue, or notoriety for our zeal;
but, at the same time, it is a sin to be always seeking to hide that which
God has bestowed upon us for the good of others.” – Charles Spurgeon

[Biko Agozino]

Sorry to say that I missed the reference to Nwando Achebe in my quick read but the author has kindly referred me to it:

"Colonialism, which accompanied Christian evangelical missions to Africa and the Americas, was the biggest force that unmasked the secrecy with which the masquerade cults operate. Nwando Achebe’s biography of Ahebi Ugbabe, the prostitute turned female king of colonial Nigeria, provides the most pugnacious devaluation of the masquerade tradition in the then Enugu area of Igboland. Empowered by the colonial system, Ahebi founded her own “Ekpe Ahebi Masquerade” as a rival institution, to the outrage of the Enugu community. This development was a stark de lement of the age-honored tradition that excluded women from membership in masquerade cults."

I stand corrected, though Ahebi was called an 'astute business woman' by Nwando and not a 'prostitute' even if it was alleged by some oral informants as njakiri of the sort that refers to independent women who 'sleep around' without being married today as 'Okada', 'Danfo', or 'Karuwa' in Igbo, Yoruba, or Hausa areas.

Biko

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

superb scholarly focus and magnificent publishing strategy.

thanks for the rich engagement, Biko 

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