On the Concept of Prototype in - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

On the Concept of Prototype in
Songye Masquerades

Dunja Hersak

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En 1986 I published a book on Songye masks and figure

sculpture based on fieldwork conducted in the Lomami
region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Su-
sak 2007). That publication is the product of a particular
interdisciplinary way of seeing and thinking about African
art history prevalent in the 1970s and ‘80s in anglophone
scholarship. It encapsulates a slice of time and academic gymnastics
that are also proper to a particular personal experience.

In this paper I intend to revisit Songye masquerades (Higo. 1),
from another time zone and from the wider angle of what is
currently referred to as “expressive culture.” While I have pre-
viously concentrated on both field and museum contexts, allá
is no doubt that I see masking now as an even broader, más
dynamic, fluid phenomenon in time and space that cannot be
reduced to selective or singular image/performance study. Es un
cultural expression that also begs to be viewed from the perspec-
tive of multiple sense-scapes and expressive forms in addition to
the visual—the auditory or olfactory, Por ejemplo. Además, nosotros
sometimes forget that the visual, material object is not necessar-
ily of prime significance in many cultures; it is not considered
in isolation, as Zöe Strother has clearly shown with the case of
Pende masking, where “the invention of a new mask centers on
its dance” (1998:42). As she points out, to Westerners it is dif-
ficult to conceive that the sculptor is the “last stop” in the cre-
ative process (ibid., pag. 30). Por eso, static analysis of collectable
objects remains the focus of “collection and exhibition” histories
which nourish the desired view of the private sector and formal
institutional doctrines. The latter is also a traditional Western
art historical approach based on a selective construct of the
“art” category, privileging so-called high art and discriminat-
ing against lowly crafts and, por supuesto, anything coming close to
tourist production.

Although it is not my intent to tackle all these issues in this
paper, I do wish to venture beyond at least some of the previ-
ously safe academic havens and look at Songye masking then
and now in various spatio-temporal representations. The par-
ticular emphasis on the concept of the “prototype,” inspired by
a conference on the topic held at the Université Libre de Brux-
elles in October 2010, provides interesting food for thought and
challenging new angles of exploration.1 In taking this road, I am
therefore obliged to ask different questions than those that have
preoccupied me before and to accept the risk of healthy theo-
retical uncertainty. Such a path does not promise to be a straight
uno, but it can liberate and sharpen our visions, leading to poten-
tially more sensitive and reflective interpretations.

As a point of departure, I will begin simply and less tortuously
by reviewing the familiar frames of the ethnographic context. El
Songye masquerading practices that I had the opportunity to wit-
ness and document in the late 1970s were those of Eastern Songye
(Higo. 2). It would appear that the origins of this tradition emerged
in an area of admixture between Songye and Luba peoples and
diffused throughout both culture areas and beyond, adapting to
different needs and expressions as is the case with other masking
societies (see Hersak 1993). In reality there is therefore not a singu-
lar Songye tradition; it is a dynamic, ephemeral phenomenon with
variants that have come and gone and may never be known. Pero
as Alfred Gell noted in relation to Marquesan art, “… despite [a]
geographical scattering and contextual transformation [el] arte
retains an inner integrity of its own, as a macroscopic whole rather
than as an aggregate of fragments” (1998:221).

At the time of my fieldwork in DRC, folkloric masking prac-
tices had begun to make their appearance but it was the so-called
traditional context of masquerades that was of particular aca-
demic interest, one in which ritual rather than theatricality was

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1 Bwadi bwa kifwebe ensemble in Luama village,
Munga chiefdom, Eastern Songye. Elder’s mask
Lobo (bien) and youth’s mask Nkwali (izquierda) con
drummers and singers.
Photo: © DuN ja hErS ak, 1978

the primary focus, as well as the sacred rather than the secular,
and mask types bore some relationship to those coveted in pri-
vate and public collections abroad. Such a context had practi-
cally disappeared throughout much of Songye country except in
the eastern sector. Allá, an elective political system still existed,
more flexible than the highly hierarchical model in the central
part of the country (es decir. Kalebwe), in which candidates for the
position of supreme chief were elected for a term of three to
five years. This rather more democratic political structure was
quite unusual in Central Africa, as the historian Jan Vansina has
pointed out (1990:182), but it also led to heavy-handed competi-
tion and strife. The masking society, known as bwadi bwa kif-
webe, was therefore used as a potent regulatory mechanism to
resolve or eradicate social tensions and retain allegiance to the
political élite in power.

How did this masking society exercise such effective control?
It relied on initiatory procedures, strategies of secrecy, and prac-
tices of witchcraft and sorcery. Maskers were the anonymous
agents of magic, of buchi or witchcraft, believed to be an inherent
and inherited ambivalent power in mind and body, potentially

activated by mere thought. Far more dangerous was masende, un
acquired and learned magical practice accessible to all through
initiation (forced or voluntary) and activated through material
substances and techniques that engaged evil spirits of the dead.2
In the masking arena that I was able to observe, two dimensions
came into play: gender and status (see Hersak 1990). Había
male and female masks and different hierarchies of power. Male
masks were distinguished by their tri-colored striations, especialmente-
cially the presence of red pigmentation and the height of their
crests (Higo. 3). The most prominent crest was proper of the elder’s
mask (Higo. 4), a grade marking superior achievement in magical
manipulation and experience, especially in masende (sorcery),
and the lesser ones constituted the suite of youth masks, all with
variable powers. A diferencia de, the female mask (Higo. 5) was distin-
guished mainly by its predominantly white coloration, signifi-
cantly more contained features, and the absence of the vertical
nose-forehead extension seen on male masks. Female masks
were said to posses buchi and masende but were essentially asso-
ciated with the rather more ambivalent magic of buchi, cual
could be malevolent and action-orientated or just a sort of extra-
sensory power that allowed contact with all dimensions of the
invisible, including more benevolent ancestral spirits.

From a public perspective of exposure, the iconography of the
masks’ features and the gender/power paradigm could be deci-
phered at a basic level by any non-initiate, but this was all the

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more crystallized through performance, or what Liza Bakewell
would call “image acts,” “activities of image instances” that have
an effect on us (1998:22, 30). This idea of visual power, its impact
and instrumentality, echoes Gell’s reference to the “enchant-
ment” of artistic experience and of “spells” being cast upon us
(1999:163); it recalls and is probably based on Walter Benjamin’s
“aura” (2009:438–39) and reverberates in the “image mysteries”
referred to by David Freedberg (2005:17). With Songye appear-
ances in the public sphere, the agency and aura of male/female
maskers clearly emerged through their action. This confirms
that what objects or art experiences “do” is undoubtedly more
important than what they “are,” a message that many have been
pointing out for some time (McLeod 1976, MacGaffey 1993, Gell
1998:68, Roberts and Roberts 2007:15). So, in this context, masculino
masks undertook mainly policing roles and, in keeping with the
their mission, they asserted their power by demonstrating wild,
erratic behavior, running frantically through the expanse of the
village, and demonstrating apparently superhuman, miraculous
tricks. Their movements could be described as angular, rapid,
and exaggerated, somewhat like the general aesthetic of male
masks with their overwhelming geometric rendering. en contra-
contraste, female masks, with their contained features, engaged in
dance with fluid, slower, more rounded movements, often with
emphasis on footwork, and confined to stage-sized village areas.
In such performances male masks generated threatening, aunque
generative, magical forces akin to disorder and change, mientras
female masks maintained a sort of social equilibrium, evoking

14 | african arts summer 2012 volumen. 45, No. 2

2 Songye country. Based on olga Boone’s 1961 map with indica-
tions of western and eastern areas of research. Note that “Songye”
on the map refers to the people who identified specifically with that
name during the time of my research. they are referred to as Eastern
Songye in the text to avoid confusion with the ethnic designation for
the overall region.
rEDraw N By QuENtiN ro MBaux of thE cartograP hy SuPPort ProjE ct,

gEograP hy DEPartMENt at thE uNivErS ité LiBrE DE BruxELLES, 2011. ©

DuN ja hErS ak.

the goodwill of ancestral spirits through their dance idiom and
thereby assuring communal continuity.

Within this scenario, the white female mask seems to have
functioned as a basic model or prototype (Higo. 6). I was told that
in most bwadi groups one female mask was essential although
numerous male types were possible of varying power grades.
Many people also claimed that the female mask was the first to be
carved in a new bwadi group in adherence to a prescribed mor-
phological typology. Its general features were replicated through
time and space as if such connections were an indispensable aspect
of bwadi identity and membership. Sucesivamente, the form and stylistic
permutations of male masks seem to have evolved from that basic
female model and, as we can see from available examples in public
and private collections, they developed into dynamic variations
attesting to the needs, expresiones, and imaginations of local carv-
ers. The diversity of these male masks is a striking display of sculp-
tural inventiveness, so much so that it is impossible to determine
their provenance, hierarchical status, or group affiliation without
precise field data. In total contrast to this variability, the white

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3 Bwadi bwa kifwebe ensemble from kikomo village,
kiloshi chiefdom, Eastern Songye. Elder’s mask (izquierda), two
youths’ masks, drummers and singers.
Photo: © DuN ja hErS ak, 1978

female mask’s replication resulted in it becoming a well-known
visual icon, interpreted in a generic way and appended to numer-
ous other object types, and in particular on shields (see Hersak
1995). As a powerful sign, its notoriety extended regionally way
beyond Songye or Luba territory (Higo. 7).

Having dealt with what the masks “do,” it becomes obvious
to ask “how” and “why” did this white mask type come to be
a prime model as opposed to male types, and of what is it a
prototype? I would agree with Gell, who held that “[norte]ot all
indexes (or art works) have prototypes or ‘represent’ anything
distinct from themselves” (1998:26). But what is the specificity
in question here and how did it come to occupy such iconic
stature? Hans Belting tells us that it is “the making of images
that establishes their place in human thinking” (2005:45). Eso
may be so, but in this context it is only partially true, for many
Songye claim that a mask is just a piece of wood even once
carved into a representational object. It must be empowered
by the wearer; it must be distanced from the maker and trans-
formed from material object into a “persona” with voice, move-

mento, and a new presence. Such new presence clearly requires
“the denial of human agency” as in many masking contexts,
but the metaphysical transformation of the performer/wearer
is rather more complex than some have outlined (see Picton
2002:10). The wearer of a kifwebe mask is a witch or sorcerer, como
noted earlier. He has already been transformed either at birth
or in early childhood through biological procedures (eso es,
mother’s milk); alternatively, his humanness has been modified
through a much more radical and violent adult experience of
initiatory procedures. With separation from the familiar milieu
through ritual, followed by the liminal or threshold phase of
existence and reintegration into society, he emerges as a new
subject endowed with the habitus of masende practices and
commitment to its doxa, to a commonality of purpose and
visión (mitchell 2006:387).

Through initiation into masende sorcery, individuality has
been effaced and reconfigured; it is a means of adopting a psy-
chological mask—an invisible but affective mask. It is this state
of “otherness” of the wearer that empowers the material object
of the kifwebe. And in so doing, a second transformation occurs.
The invisible is made visible, given embodiment and a new iden-
tity. The witch or sorcerer acquires representation, a face, a body,
and sensorial animation. Belting and others have discussed this
process of imaging and “the simultaneity as well as opposition
between absence and presence,” particularly conspicuous in the
case of a mask (2005:46, 47), in this case a Songye mask which

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4 Mask of elder, Ndale; village kikomo, kiloshi
chiefdom, Eastern Songye.
Photo: © DuN ja hErS ak, 1978

5 female mask kalyanga from village Ngoma,
Munga chiefdom, Eastern Songye.
Photo: © DuN ja hErS ak, 1978

brings into being the new presence of a kifwebe persona as a
supernatural, socially alien creature of the wild. The mask wearer
is now referred to by the name ngulungu, a Kisongye term mean-
ing bushbuck, but as Allen Roberts rightly observes, this sim-
ply accentuates a new and probably anomalous “state of being,"
as there is no resemblance between the animal and the mask
(1995:92). For some, such transformation may be questionable or
subject to modification. To followers of local African religions as
well as to Christian believers, Por ejemplo, the invisible is as real
as the visible; there is no transition, the invisible is simply made
apparent (Miles 1998:168). Strother conceptualizes this by say-
ing that the mask creates a liminal space between the living and
the dead or, I would say, a blending between the living of both
spheres of existence.

The initiatory procedure I have referred to is, sin embargo, not the
only requirement for those seeking entry into the masking society.
All candidates of bwadi bwa kifwebe must also undergo initiation
proper to that association, hence masende members are exposed
to a second ordeal which reconfigures their social roles and psy-
chological makeup even further. As with most closed associations,
during this procedure they learn a secret code which serves as a
subsequent means of membership identification. What is interest-
ing here is that this code consists of a verbal image of a kifwebe
creature. All parts of the mask and costume down to the smallest
details are identified in an esoteric language, and each term is also
linked to some metaphoric, mnemonic phrase. Although I have
not been made privy to this knowledge in its entirety, I was able
to discover some of the content which unveiled a vast spectrum

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6 female mask (izquierda) with youth’s mask and
musenge, guide of the masks. Ngoma village,
Munga chiefdom, Eastern Songye.
Photo: © DuN ja hErS ak, 1978

7 chief from ubundu with his ceremonial shield
crowned by a white kifwebe mask. Lengola area to
the far north of the Songye.
PuBLiSh ED B y gaStoN -DENyS PériE r, 1924.

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of references to different aspects of nature, cultura, and cosmol-
ogia. For the purposes of this discussion, the sense of it all is not
of vital significance; suffice it to say that such terminology is the
currency of secrecy intended to separate nonmembers from mem-
bers through strategies of concealment and revelation (see Nooter
1993). Yet there is something here that is intriguing and pertinent
to this paper; it is the fact that there is a single verbal image and,
while it is based on a generalized concept of the kifwebe creature,
the focus is unquestionably on the characteristics of a powerful
male mask with its tricolored stripes and pronounced facial fea-
turas (see Hersak 2007:60). Having in the past labored on the
interpretation of meaning and symbolism of this code in keeping
with scholarly pursuits of that time, such work has overshadowed
the most obvious question: why is a male model significant to this
verbal image and why particularly in the secret, initiatory domain?
Phrased as such, it follows that one also needs to examine why the
female remains a purely visual, material, and conspicuously public
image in Eastern Songye masquerade traditions.

To address these questions, or at least to propose some hypoth-
eses, literature concerning the significance of initiation is useful.
Jon Mitchell, in surveying this topic (particularly in relation to
actuación), notes that more recent studies have focused not
on transition from one social category to another as dealt with by
Van Gennep in his classic 1909 model in The Rites of Passage (Van
Gennep 1960), but “on the transformation of the person in and
through initiation” (mitchell 2006:387). What emerges from the
varied anthropological and sociological paths of Victor Turner,
Pierre Bourdieu, and Maurice Block, among others, is an empha-
sis on the affective-experiential aspect of transformation. mitchell
refers in particular to terror, brutality, and fear as central phenom-
ena of initiation, such as in societies of Papua New Guinea. Quot-
ing Whitehouse, he states that vivid recollections of such ritual
experiences create salient memories or “flashbulb memories” that
seem to strengthen with time and “serve as a means of ordering
subsequent reflections about that transformation” (ibid., pag. 389).

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8 close-up of a youth’s mask from kikome village, kiloshi chief-
dominación, Eastern Songye.
Photo: © DuN ja hErS ak, 1978

9 Male ndoshi mask. kalebwe (my attribution) but Eastern Songye
provenance. collected prior to 1928 in the area of katompe, kabalo
territorio (Luba/ Songye region). this is the photograph that i used
during my field research and is the one example of a museum piece
that was recognized by everyone throughout the region of research
and unanimously referred to as an ndoshi or witch. royal Museum
for central africa, tervuren, Eo. 0.0.30500.
Photo: © rM ca, tErvurEN

With Songye masks, it would seem that the verbal code of the
male elder is a mnemonic based on the sedimentation of those
fear-inducing experiences. The importance of this code is more
referential than symbolic. Mention of sorcerers, transformación,
and multiple animal species that are powerful and dangerous,
from elephants to bees to the pugnacious Burchell’s zebra, son
clearly imbedded in that code, which includes reference to the
striations and projections of the male masker. The visual rep-
resentation echoes this collage, imaging a bizarre entity, truly
liminal in Van Gennep’s and Turner’s terms, that is not human,
animal, or spirit, but is suggestive of a novel hybridity (Tornero
1967:93). Voluminous exaggerations (Higo. 8 and cover) of cer-
tain facial features emphasize acute sensory perception as that
of sorcerers who see, smell, and feel more like certain animals
than ordinary people. The mask’s bulging eyes, Por ejemplo, son
referred to as the “swellings of sorcerers,” the exaggerated mouth
is said to be “the beak of a bird” or “the flame of a sorcerer,” the

18 | african arts summer 2012 volumen. 45, No. 2

nose is “the hole (opening) of a furnace,” and the facial design
is said to be “a thing rolled out in a different manner,” possi-
bly something transformed and powerful like the stripes of the
zebra. As Allen Roberts points out (in dealing with the kifwebe
amongst other examples), people need the strange; they need to
create monsters as they must face fear, the fear of death “… and
so Fear itself is given the face of creatures no one has ever seen
or experienced, except well beyond the pale …” (1995:91). Con
reference to masks, Roberts further notes the “peculiar interrela-
tion of reality and image” to confront paradox (ibid.) Freedberg
summarizes this same phenomenon by saying: “the mask is the
image and the image is the mask” (2005:18).

With white female masks, the case is different from that of
machos. Female masks are not the images of deep-rooted psy-
chological dramas. Bastante, their aesthetic mirrors containment,
calm, and the “metaphoric rubric of coolness” referred to long
ago by Robert Farris Thompson in discussion of other African
sculptural expressions (1974:43). Female masks are conceived
and reproduced in schematic form as the emblems of power
associated with the masking society and as such, they are eas-
ily transferable from one object type to another, as seen in some
shields and stools. They are what Malcolm McLeod would have

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To put this hypothesis to the test, we might look briefly at other
contexts and temporalities of these masquerades such as those
in the central part of Songye country among the Kalebwe and
Chofwe and contemporary examples that I have obtained data of
recently. Here the task becomes much more complicated, as there
are tangled up synchronic and diachronic dimensions punctuated
with discontinuities in practice and in our documentation. Esto es
where an orderly academic construction faces the chaos of over-
regazo, concurrent and opposing phenomena, and potential contra-
diction. Brevemente, my understanding of masquerades in the central
Songye region is based upon the study of very patchy sources and
some discussions in situ. The fact is that I never saw masks of any
kind in performance there in the late 1970s. In the past, maskers
clearly exercised a regulatory function as reported by Rev. W.F.P.
Burton in 19284 and in 1959/60 by Alan Merriam, who conducted
research farther to the northwest among Bala people (1978:No. 4,
94; also see map, Higo. 2). These reports are, sin embargo, mere frag-
ments of largely unknown contexts. What is clear is that central
grupos, unlike Eastern Songye, were more exposed to the watch-
ful eyes of missionaries and other expatriates in the pre- y
post-independence periods, and they had already experienced
the collapse of their centralized political system in the 1920s. El
changing character of the polity probably brought about a progres-
sive redefinition of masking practices. As the regulatory function
of the kifwebe society became obsolete, it was replaced by folkloric
purposes and contexts in which social concerns such as identity
and the need for community harmony were essential motivations.

called “statement art” that is, “images which exist in their final
intended form and, by themselves, communicate their mean-
En g; [ellos] … are primarily associated with the glorification or
reinforcement of existing systems of authority …” (1976:99).3
As these images are not annexed to a verbal code, they exist
independently and can therefore “migrate,” to use a concept
proposed by Belting (2005:51). Playing upon their emblematic
estado, such representations are “concerned with copying or reit-
erating an existing order” and are formal, fixed, and timeless,
as McLeod holds (ibid., páginas. 101–102); es
precisely the latter word, “timelessness,"
that explains their morphological homo-
geneity. Inspired by McLeod’s analysis, I
see that the aesthetic repertoire of male
masks is inevitably “‘richer’ because they
depend on a wider range of codes … and
they can therefore provide complex meta-
phorical structures which are particularly
useful in situations of [social] readjust-
mento (such as initiations or installation
rites) …” (ibid. pag. 102). With all of this I
would venture to say that the white female
mask was probably the initial model to
be created by emergent regulatory societ-
ies of the bwadi bwa kifwebe, “the precur-
sory work” (Gell 1998:234) from which
other variables developed with changing
sociopolitical circumstances, intensified
masende practice and bwadi control, y
regional spread and adaptation.

10 Ndoshi style mask. kalebwe, Ebombo chiefdom
(my attribution).
Photo: karEL P LaSMa NS, 1960S ; © DuN ja hErS ak

11 Ndoshi style maskers. kalebwe, Ebombo chief-
dominación (my attribution).
Photo: karEL P LaSMa NS, 1960S ; © DuN ja hErS ak

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volumen. 45, No. 2 summer 2012 african arts | 19

that had an impact on popular mask production in the central
Songye region and even on subsequent masking developments
among Eastern Songye. According to my field research on well-
known masks from the Tervuren museum, such innovation
probably dates to the late 1920s and originated in a borderland
between eastern and western Songye, with the Kalebwe chief-
dom of Ebombo playing the most significant intermediary role
in the assimilation of varied compositional elements (see Hersak
2007:93–100; also map, Higo. 2). A single museum example was
recognized by all Songye I spoke to (which was not the case with
many other masks) y, most interestingly, everyone referred to
it as ndoshi, meaning “witch” (Higo. 9). While I have been puz-
zled by the use of this term for a mask considered particularly
powerful, I now believe that that designation was symptom-
atic of the changing, veiled or, more likely, different politico-
economic contexts in that region. Although male mask images
began to stabilize in form, the highly exaggerated facial configu-
ration with grooved striations (quite in contrast to the aesthetic
of the female) entered the sphere of replication and eventually
serial workshop production, perhaps resounding those resid-
ual or “flashbulb memories” of past initiatory experiences (Higo.
10). More probably it was the widespread notoriety of that male
imagen, associated with a persona of extraordinary power, eso
was selectively fixed in time and rendered iconic (Higo. 11).

I am not suggesting here that the creative impulse was in
any way arrested; on the contrary, what I see is simply different
modes and emphases of expression relevant to post-indepen-
dence circumstances. Among examples from the 1960s and ‘70s
collected and photographed in the field by Karel Plasmans, a Bel-

A theatrical genre of masking seems to have created a new interac-
tive space for celebration, social cohesion, and mediation.

The secularization process, much more complicated than
I can deal with here, seems to have led to greater standardiza-
tion of mask forms. También, both male and female characters
acquired comparable representational emphasis and visibility in
actuación. This may account for the fact that a male proto-
type seems to have emerged, paralleling the status of the female,

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12 Ndoshi style masks with highly exaggerated fea-
tures and the unusual appearance of blue pigmenta-
tion for the striations. kalebwe, Ebombo chiefdom,
Mulenda.
Photo: karEL P LaSMa NS, 1960S ; © DuN ja hErS ak

13 Masker with blue, naranja, and white facial
striations and a costume made of burlap. kalebwe,
Ebombo chiefdom, kalongo.
Photo: karEL P LaSMa NS, 1960S ; © DuN ja hErS ak

20 | african arts summer 2012 volumen. 45, No. 2

hersak.indd 20

2/29/2012 8:33:16 AM

14 Masker appearing in the village of ilunga Ngulu,
kiloshi chiefdom, Eastern Songye. Note the red,
white, and black striations and the “traditional”
plaiting of the costume.
Photo: © DuN ja hErS ak, 1978

gian agronomist, there are audacious examples displaying dif-
ferent surface patterns with the introduction of vibrant tones of
blue or orange color, Por ejemplo (Higo. 12). Además, costumes
are constructed of basic sackcloth rather than the raffia plaiting
of earlier times (Higo. 13). Some art historians and probably many
collectors and dealers may dismiss these bifwebe as inauthentic
and aesthetically inferior. De hecho, such pieces are not a conspicu-
ous feature of important collections, public or private, and I am
sure their life histories have fallen prey to purist attitudes of out-
siders. While there are certainly works poor in quality, formal
experimentation and changing conventions should not be dis-
missed so easily in response to the demands of the international
art market. Rather than condemning such phenomena categori-
cally as “degradation,” it is more insightful to consider these
changes as innovation brought about by significant sociocul-
tural and historical processes (see Geary and Xatart 2007).5 El
use of industrial pigments and burlap rather than hand-made
raffia plaiting may have been viewed as features of modernity
at that point in time, appropriate for this new genre of public
performers, rather than as signs of impoverishment. Significant
and corresponding changes in performance style were certainly
also occurring with dance and music providing the prime motor
force of spatial and human transformation (see Strother 1998).6

After the 1960s, when Karel Plasmans amassed the majority of
his extensive holdings, the Institut des Musées du Congo (para-
merly IMNZ) in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi also followed with
major collecting expeditions in the 1970s. As a result of these
ventures, the Songye undoubtedly became aware of national and
outside interests in their material culture but also, in the process
of commercial negotiations, received feedback about desirable
aesthetic criteria. I would hazard to say that such interactions
with market forces contributed to subsequent modifications. El
azul, verde, or orange colors disappeared and costumes were
again fabricated in the so-called traditional manner (Higo. 14).
Were these Western demands or a result of Mobutu’s pervasive
ideology of “authenticité”?7 How should one evaluate this course
of development? Should it be considered as regression or cul-
tural renewal? The perspectives on this issue are multiple and
depend on who is doing the viewing and how we wish to engage
in seeing. Además, responses to larger world contexts are inevi-
table as are borrowings from the West and responses to it.

En 2010 I had the opportunity to see film footage taken by
Patric Claes of recent kifwebe maskers among Eastern Songye,
where I conducted research thirty years ago, which provides
clear evidence of the popularization of these practices and fur-
ther highlights changes in the folk context.8 One example from
the village of Katea shows a white female mask and a male with
an oversized crest, both based on prototypical models, sharing
the small, stage-like space and dancing side by side or in tan-
dem (Higo. 15). The wild, threatening, non-dance improvisations
are gone and both maskers concentrate on foot and hip move-

ments characteristic of previous female bifwebe dances. Women
are welcome spectators rather than ostracized as noninitiates,
and they encourage the performers, conspicuously entering
center stage. Similarmente, musenge, the guide of the bifwebe, par-
ticipates in the dance repertoire rather than simply clearing the
path of undesirably noninitiates, and all performers align them-
selves frontally, facing the camera. In examining two other film
sequences from the same area, I suddenly had the impression of
seeing salient aspects of the familiar rearranged and wondered
to what extent my research and publications had also contrib-
uted to these manifestations. In the village of Pofu, the three
main characters appeared (femenino, youth, elder) but gender and
hierarchical power distinctions seemed blurred and redefined,
and regional morphological and stylistic features were recom-
bined (Higo. 16). Por ejemplo, the elder’s mask, recognized essen-
tially by its aggrandizement, was devoid of the key signaling
element, namely the crest, and the surface was covered with thin,
grooved, linear striations typical of the Kalebwe tradition rather
than the wide, tricolored stripes found in the eastern area. En el
film from Mukulungu village, both genders of maskers not only
flailed sticks but acquired insignia of office; a female kifwebe held
a fly whisk like a dignitary while the male masker danced with an
axe, both of these being traditional markers of political and spe-

volumen. 45, No. 2 summer 2012 african arts | 21

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cial status, but in the human domain (Higo. 17). Curiosamente, el
handle of one of these axes was surmounted by a carved head,
like the well-known examples among neighboring Luba. Instru-
mentation clearly remained crucial to these performances and
although slit drums were still present, even if some were scaled
down in size from earlier ones as in one example, they began to
be replaced by round drums; a horn blower was also introduced
in one dance as well as a percussionist tapping on metal rods. Como
Peter van Dommelen points out, hybridization, or the “mixing”
of material and visual culture as can be seen elsewhere, is hardly
random but quite structured (2006:118–19). En este caso, recog-
nizable and stereotypical elements, some of which are the exten-
sion of prototypes, provide anchorage that allows innovations
and inventions to take root and acquire meaning.

These masks are, En realidad, icons of a valued and perhaps imag-
ined past set into action through a new genre of theatrical rep-
resentimiento, in most cases orchestrated and performed by a
young generation rather than the elders, as Paul Lane (1988), Zöe
Strother (1998), Rosita Henry (2000), and others have shown in
work conducted elsewhere. They are performances during which
individual role playing, and especially visibility, is sought, y
contemporaneity is applauded in an alternative “space of perfor-
mative encounter” (Henry et al. 2000:254). As Henry explains
(in relation to Aboriginal tourist dances), “far from being com-
modified, inauthentic representations, … such performances
provide an opportunity for … people to bring an embod-
ied memory of the past into the present” (ibid., pag. 258). Esto es
indeed so with current Songye masquerades, which celebrate
another time through the staging of selective recall. With lyrics
that refer to epics of a single Songye people, there is an ethnic
and political recasting that clearly aims at international visibil-
ity and recognition. But there are also the basic elements of play
and make-believe, with people seemingly simulating fear of the
bifwebe. In so doing, a union is created between performers and
audience, as a vivid, lived presence which, as Schieffelin states,
“alter[s] moods, relaciones sociales, bodily dispositions and states of
mind” (quoted by Mitchell 2006:384) transforming everyday vil-
lage space into a place of joy and well-being.

En conclusión, I am reminded of Gell again, who might have
said that all these spatially separated micro-histories of masquer-
ades are a part of a “set”; they are “distributed” in time and space,
and each contributes to the whole through varying aspects of
prototypicality (1998:221). In the introduction to the most recent
publication on the topic of prototypes, Graeme Were states quite
simply that in “… Gell’s anthropological theory of art … all arte-
facts appear to be prototypes: there exists no conventional origin
or end point” (2010:270). Each creation or performance draws
from the past and into the future, each is an original and a deri-
vación, and each is somehow imperfect. It is this very aspect of
imperfection that endows it with the “capacity to generate varia-
tion” (ibid., páginas. 267–68; Buchli 2010:275). But through variation
there are also “movements of thoughts” incarnated in the vis-
ible (Were 2010:267), allowing for all manner of expression as in
recent kifwebe performances.

DUNJA HERSAK is Associate Professor of African art history at the Uni-
versité Libre de Bruxelles and Overseas Exhibition Review Editor of Afri-
can Arts. dvhersak @gmail.com

15 Maskers performing in katea village, kiloshi
chiefdom, Eastern Songye. female masker on left,
male to the right.
StiLL froM fiLM tak EN B y Patric cLa ES, 2010

16 three maskers performing in Pofu village,
Munga chiefdom, Eastern Songye. female masker
on the left, elder to the right and another male in
the background.
StiLL froM fiLM tak EN B y Patric cLa ES, 2010

17 female masker (bien) and male (izquierda) perform-
ing in Mukulungu village, Mumbo chiefdom, Eastern
Songye.
StiLL froM fiLM tak EN B y Patric cLa ES, 2010

22 | african arts summer 2012 volumen. 45, No. 2

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Notas

I must thank Patric Claes for showing me some

Centrale.

I would like to thank Graeme Were for his comments

on this paper and also Allen Roberts for his insightful
editorial work. I assume full responsibility, sin embargo, para
the content of this article.

1 The conference, entitled Image et prototype, en
which I presented this paper was held at ULB October
7–9, 2010, and organized by the research unit Image et
Culture Visuelle.

2 The distinction between buchi, an inherent,
ambivalent power, and masende, a learned magical
operación, is broadly based on the well-known Zande
model propose by Evans-Pritchard, who used the
two existing English term to designate “witchcraft”
for the former and “sorcery” for the latter (1937:387).
Esto es, sin embargo, not applicable in a general way. Peter
Geschiere, Por ejemplo, working among the Maka of
eastern Cameroon, contests this bipartite scheme as
being heavily moralist and rigid, opposing practices of
evil and good from a Western perspective. He refers
to a single notion known as djambe, which he defines
as an ambiguous, inherent force which translates eas-
ily into the single French word sorcellerie (sorcery)
(1995:20–21). The problem here is not one of conflicting
or flawed interpretation or even differences in terminol-
ogia. Varying contexts and belief systems exist. Among
Vili and Yombe peoples of Congo Brazzaville, where I
conducted extensive fieldwork in the 1990s, ideas about
sorcery correspond more closely to those dealt with by
Geschiere rather than to my findings among the Songye
and apply to an innate, ambivalent power that can be
used for both malevolent and positive purposes (Hersak
2001:627–28).

I have used Malcolm McLeod’s distinction

between “process” and “statement” art previously and
for different purposes (Hersak 2010:39, 40). While it
has allowed me to think about various aspects relat-
ing to the production, usar, and conceptualization of
Songye magical figures and masks, one does have to
bear in mind that it is a theory and, tal como, rigid due
to its schematization and a part of a particular period
of scholarly exploration. Most African art is obviously
a part of ongoing processes, whether secular or ritual,
but there are nonetheless significant distinctions that
McLeod’s framework highlights.

4 Catalogue files in the Ethnography Department

of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, file no. 30617.
In their study of the Geneviève Macmillan col-

lection of African and Oceanic art, Geary and Xatart
provide interesting examples of changing conventions
and meanings of objects during the second half of the
20th century which defy static Western categorizations
and stereotypes.

Strother’s discussion of the invention of the masker

Gindongo (Gi) Tshi is a poignant example of the prime
importance of dance and music in the realization of the
character and his subsequent success (1998:267–81).

7 The ideology of authenticité was a political
movement introduced by Mobutu Sese Seko in the
1970s. In reaction to colonialism and Western influ-
ence, Mobutu sought a return to one’s origins, hence,
Por ejemplo, personal and place names were changed
to African ones and the dress code required was, para-
doxically, a Mao-style suit for men and wrap-around
tie-dyed ensembles for women. También, the production of
so-called traditional art styles was encouraged and their
repatriation from the West was demanded.

of the films he took of recent kifwebe performances
among Eastern Songye and sharing his experiences
with me during a stay in Brussels in June 2010. I am also
most grateful to Woods Davy for drawing my attention
to this material and kindly providing me with stills for
this paper.

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