To define this complex concept, which is the mask, we can say that it is a religious, social, and political institution.
Religious
The masks are spirits sent by the African man to insure the mediation between God, the ancestors and the African. The masks are called upon in cases of major difficulties (illnesses, natural disasters, bad crops …). They appear in the rites of passage such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death. There is hardly any ceremony without the presence of the masks.
Social
The masks keep the good harmony of the community in the villages. They keep youngsters from going astray. They punish the guilty. They insure the continuity of knowledge of the secrets of nature, of tradition and of history. They are the active memory of the people. They are called upon in important moments of the year (harvest feasts for example). Some masks have the function of amusing the people in the village. For example, the Dan peoples of Liberia and the Ivory Coast have a mask named Kaogle. Its function is "the provision of rowdy entertainment which 'heats up' the public and spurs them to wild behavior." (Fischer and Himmelheber, 1984, 67). It is these secular masks that appear in the shows organized for tourists and foreigners.
Political
In some regions, mainly in the west of the Ivory Coast, the masks intervene in all the vital decisions made by the community: war and peace, order and justice, even in matters of the environment with some masks that prohibit the waste of natural resources from the forest. For example, the Dan have a mask named Zakpei. This mask appears only during the dry season. The houses of the villages were made of fiber and could easily catch fire. During the dry season, the wind can be much stronger and thus the houses were especially susceptible to fire. The masks search the village for cooking fires, overturn pots, and severely punish disobedient women. Since the houses in the lower plains are now built with corrugated iron and only a few villages maintain fiber roofed houses, the Zakpei mask is fading into history. Each mask has a specific function: the mask judge, the mask of wisdom, the mask of entertainment. In the frame of the law that regulates the masks, when the mask speaks, none goes against him. His decisions are without appeal.
Unit activities
As an introduction to the unit about masks we are going to study the poem "Prayer to Masks" by Léopold Sédar Senghor. (Rosenberg, 1997, 340). This poem reflects themes that will be discussed in the unit such as totems, the spirit of the ancestors, and their role in traditional African life.
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Prayer to Masks
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Léopold Sédar Senghor
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Masks! Masks!
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Black mask red mask, you white-and-black masks
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Masks of the four points from which the Spirit blows
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In silence I salute you!
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Nor you the least, the Lion-headed Ancestor
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You guard this place forbidden to all laughter of women, to all smiles that fade
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You distil this air of eternity in which I breathe the air of my Fathers.
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Masks of unmasked faces, stripped of the marks of illness and the lines of age
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You who have fashioned this portrait, this my face bent over the altar of white paper
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In your own image, hear me!
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The Africa of the empires is dying, see, the agony of a pitiful princess
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And Europe too where we are joined at the navel.
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Fix your unchanging eyes upon your children, who are given orders
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Who give away their lives like the poor their last clothes.
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Let us report present at the rebirth of the World
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Like the yeast which white flour needs.
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For who would teach rhythm to a dead world of machines and guns?
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Who would give the cry of joy to wake the dead and the bereaved at dawn?
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Say, who would give back the memory of life to the man whose hopes are smashed?
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They call us men of coffee cotton oil
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They call us men of death.
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We are the men of the dance, whose feet draw new strength pounding the hardened earth.
The following questions will be used in our discussion to help understand the poem:
Why is the speaker calling upon the masks?
What does the poem indicate about the traditional relationship between the living and the dead?
What themes are found in the poem?
The second activity is designed to introduce students to various elements of African art. I think it is worthwhile to expose the students to African art in a general manner before having them work with masks alone. This activity will give the students a feel of what they will be doing in the third activity, which is the application of the methodology of object analysis. Student will work in mixed-ability pairs and receive a certain number of laminated pictures, each of which contains an image of a piece of African art, be it a mask, a sculpture or an object. (For laminated picture reference see Materials for classroom use). The pairs carefully examine each picture, draw/sketch and describe the art piece, determine the material used to create it, and guess its purpose or function. A detail of the activity is as follows:
First, I will review the elements of African art with the students. They will write down the following key details in their notebooks.
