Spatial continuities: masks and cultural interactions between the Delta and Southeastern Nigeria

African Arts, Spring, 2002 by Eli Bentor

   It is customary to classify West African sculpture using two criteria,
   tribe and style, on the assumption that there is a correlation between
   them.... However, I am really concerned with an area over which a
   particular culture trait--in this case a type or style of sculpture--is
   distributed. This area may or may not coincide with a linguistic or
   political area. (Jones 1973:59)

Jones's studies were followed by Herbert Cole and Chike Aniakor's Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos (1984), which provides a detailed and nuanced picture of art in Igboland. Both Jones and Cole remain concerned with what we can term a "geography of style"--the process of mapping out stylistic distribution. What is missing from such an approach is a diachronic perspective that can explain how this distribution evolved. The specific configuration of mask genres, and their interpretation in any given locality, can only be discerned in light of the historical process that created it (Bentor 1995).

Understanding the dynamics of masking in Southeastern Nigeria requires another important analytical shift, away from imposed categories of style and toward locally named and identified genres of masking. A genre often includes several formal types of masks, accompanied by their costumes, music, dance steps, and an organization such as a masking or secret society that uses them. Masking genres are ever evolving and changing. In a given village group, each genre is well defined, but because each group has a unique history, the array of mask types, mask names, and sponsoring associations often vary greatly from one location to another. It is this complex pattern of changes over space and time that is my concern here.

The East-West Trajectory: Ekpe, Okonko, and Mmanwu Masquerades

If we examine a broad band of southern Nigeria from the Cross to the Niger rivers (Fig. 2), we can trace a pattern of continuous artistic change. Limiting the scope of investigation to masking, we can see how these traditions flow in and out of each other with no assumptions of a hierarchy that distinguishes between original and derivative styles. Moving from east to west and from south to north, we begin in the Cross River, where the Ekpe (or Ngbe) secret society is a dominant institution. Ekpe masqueraders appear only in functions of the society, such as initiation and burials of members, not in community-wide festivals. Performances of the society's masks were documented east of the Cross River by Malcolm Ruel among the Banyang (1967:216-58), by Elliot Leib and Renee Romano (1984) among the Ejagham, by me at Arochukwu west of the river (Bentor 1994), and by others. Many functions are held out of sight in the Ekpe lodge. At burial ceremonies several processions, each one associated with a grade of the society, go from the lodge to the burial place. Accompanying each group is a single masquerader dressed in a tight-fitting knitted body suit; he carries a whip, but does not wear a wooden mask or headdress (Fig. 1). Among the Cross River Igbo, the generic term for all Ekpe society masks is Okonko (Figs. 3, 4). While the semantics of the word Okonko are not clear, it seems to be of Igbo origin.