The Ẹpa Masquerades
of Èkìtì
A Structural Approach
Will Rea
all photos by the author except where otherwise noted
Forms appear out of other forms, that is they are contained
by them: the container is everted, to reveal what is inside
… It follows that past and future become present: any one
form anticipates its transformation, and is itself respectively
the transformation of a prior form. (Strathern 1992: 249)
Phillip Allison, formerly of the Nigerian Forestry
Commission and then the Nigerian National
Museums and Monuments Commission,
是
probably best known for the survey work that he
carried out on the stone sculptures of the Cross
Rivers region in Nigeria. 然而, the recently
cataloged Phillip Allison archive contains material derived from
research that was undertaken in other regions of Nigeria.1 Among
the extensive documents are photographs of a masked perfor-
曼斯, labeled as “Ẹpa masquerade ceremony,” taken in 1960 在
the village of Ikùn-Ọba (Figs. 1–2). Allison’s collection diary notes
that he visited Ikùn on July 15, 1960, as part of a collection and
survey journey that included visits to the towns of Òwò and Ìkòlé.
In his diary Allison writes that in Ikùn he encountered “five
Egúngún [原文如此] with Janus faced helmet masks surmounted with
carvings and feathers and porcupine quills, they carry swords
and ornamental axes; they are followed about by singing crowds
of women.” He notes that he is told that “this Egúngún [原文如此] 符号-
bolises the new yam and promotes fertility amongst women.” He
also notes that the festival is rather dull, 并由 4:30 that afternoon
he is back in Ìkòlé and is much more animated by the political
crisis that saw the Western House Assembly dissolved and elec-
tions set for August 8.
Will Rea is senior lecturer in African art history at the School of Fine
Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. 他
has worked in and on Nigeria for over thirty years. Currently he is ad-
vising on the curation of the new J.K. Randle Yorùbá Heritage Centre in
Lagos. w.r.rea@leeds.ac.uk
16 | african arts AUTUMN 2019 VOL. 52, NO. 3
The festival that Allison’s photographs document is known lo-
cally as Egbùrù and is performed for a local deity (ìmólè) of that
姓名. The masks are of a form routinely described as Ẹpa or
Ẹpa-type. During the festival, five of these masks appear over a
two-day period. Four of the masks have superstructural carv-
ings that stand above the wooden mask that actually covers
the head, while the mask that is called Egbùrù is a single, 大的,
Janus-faced head covering.
ẸPA AND ẸPA TYPE MASQUERADES
Allison’s photographs are not the only ones of the masquerade
festival at Ikùn. 在 1990 I was also given access to the festival, 和
some part of that experience formed the basis for a paper written in
2000 comparing Ẹpa and Ẹpa-type masquerades with other forms
of masked performance extant in Èkìtì, particularly with those of
Egígún, a masquerade form closely related to Egúngún performed
to celebrate the departed dead (Rea 2000; see also Rea 2017).
The endeavor in that chapter was to disentangle the two forms of
masked performance, pointing to the structural and metaphysical
differences between them. 像这样, and placed next to John Picton’s
(2000) similar disentangling of Egúngún and Gèlèdé, the attempt
was to complicate the notions of masquerade in Yorùbá culture, par-
ticularly its iteration as defined by different regional forms and types
of masked practice. The point was that the focus on the mask as an
object tended to conflate a number of ideas about the regional dis-
tribution of Yorùbá practices and identities. The mask had become,
in popular perception, a diagnostic object defining regional catego-
里斯. Both papers were obviously influenced by Picton’s more gen-
eral meditation on “what’s in a mask” and the diversity of forms and
ideas that he had noted in western Nigeria (皮克顿 1990).
The aim of this paper (with Allison’s photographs as a prompt)
is to revisit Ẹpa and Ẹpa-type masquerades. To do so is to add
to a corpus of literature which, to an extent, appears reasonably
exhaustive. 克拉克 (1944), 汤普森 (1974), Vander Heyden
(1977), and particularly Ojo (1974, 1978) have all written and doc-
umented different forms of mask and performance that have been
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1 Ẹpa-type masks, Ikùn Ọba
Phillip Allison Archive, Weston Library,
牛津大学
照片: Phillip Allison
Ẹpa-type masks, Ikùn Ọba
2
Phillip Allison Archive, Weston Library,
牛津大学
照片: Phillip Allison
labeled Ẹpa or Ẹpa-type.2 The forms of these masks are relatively
众所周知的, both in the literature and in collections. The grandeur
of these masks, the fact that they are often the product of known
and named carving workshops, and the diversity of differing rep-
resentational themes depicted on the superstructures, alongside
seemingly diverse contexts of performance, has meant a continu-
ing interest both in Nigeria and in the West.
这张纸, while adding to the understanding of Ẹpa and Ẹpa-
type masked practice in Western Nigeria, aims to move away
from those works that base their analysis primarily on the mask.
Thompson’s (1974) classic description of the Ẹpa masquerade goes
a long way, in prose, toward an intuitive understanding of the mask
as performed, but in failing to move beyond the performance of
the mask, that analysis does not substantially grasp the implica-
tions of the wider context of this masked performance in relation
to Èkìtì Yorùbá cosmology and within the social formations of the
groups that perform and use these masks.
In attempting to grasp those implications, the effort here is also
to address the remarks that Marsha Vander Heyden presented at
the conclusion of her 1977 纸. She wrote,
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VOL. 52, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2019 african arts | 17
Andrew Apter, that works toward improving “our understanding
of the politico-ritual topography of Yorùbáland, [和] the histori-
cal processes of Yorùbá ethnogenesis itself ” (Apter 1995: 395).
部分, confusion about Ẹpa stems from an art-historical litera-
ture impressed by the formal qualities of the mask and the remark-
able moments of display rather than by the practices and beliefs
with which that object is associated. The so-called classic Ẹpa mask
is indeed an impressive object, the largest single-piece carved mask
in Africa and one which, in the hands of the various master carvers
of Èkìtì, gives fabulous testament to the skill of a carving tradition
that thrived in (至少) the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 在
most cases the “thing” that is known as Ẹpa is a mask surmounted
by a superstructure. The mask (the piece that sits on the head) 是
generally described as being like an inverted cooking pot (ìkókó)
and it may or may not be Janus-faced. The superstructure is often
tall and, in the hands of a proficient carver, can feature carvings of
incomparable standard.
This paper is not overly concerned to offer a precise exegeti-
cal exercise in deciphering visual meaning or an iconographic or
representational analysis of the sculptural form of these masks.
Such an approach would, to an extent, be an exercise in simply
reiterating the seminal work of J.R. Ojo (1974) and his subsequent
1978 纸. In that paper, primarily concerned with the exegetical
analysis of the superstructural forms of the Ẹpa-type masks, Ojo
offers three broad categories of sculptural iconography. 这些都是
“mother-with-children,” warrior and leopard motifs, and sculp-
tural forms based upon Ọsányìn, a deity associated with healing.
Ojo acknowledges that this is not an exhaustive list of icono-
graphic categories and that there is considerable variation in the
forms and styles of these themes represented. 一般来说, 然而,
his typology corresponds to the most commonly observed themes
of Ẹpa-type superstructure, whether in situ in Èkìtì or in the large
number of these sculptures that reside in museums and private
collections around the world.
Ojo’s argument from his iconographic reading is that these three
themes are related to and have developed in response to the history
of disruption and warfare within the Èkìtì region. The province’s
historical position suggests that Ojo’s assumptions are very rea-
sonable. That the visual iconography of the superstructure reflects
this history is unsurprising and Ojo’s analysis that this history is
reflected in the material culture associated with devotion and pe-
tition is, although somewhat functionalist, broadly correct. 什么
is lacking from this work is any systematic attempt to understand
the way that the festivals and masks intersect with the religious
and political sociology that underpins the structural dynamics of
表现, and how that history may not simply be manifest
in iconography, but is the underlying reason for the variety and
variation. Once that task has been completed it might then be pos-
sible to more accurately relate the corpus of Ẹpa-type masks and
performances to a deeper, more nuanced, sociohistorical account
of Èkìtì, one that accepts the iconological analysis as broadly cor-
rect as a function of Èkìtì’s general history, but which also puts an
emphasis back onto more precisely understanding the position of
the “mask” (as a thing) and the relationships that pertain between
lineages, cults, and the forms of manifestation contained within
Ẹpa-type ritual. 像这样, this may then point to particularities
within Èkìtì ritual organization that offers comparison with the
more centralized imperial Yorùbá towns.
3 Egbùrù mask. Ikùn-Ọba, 1990.
现在, the Ẹpa mask should be considered basically as a mask
类型, rather than one strictly associated with a given festival, 作为
Gelede masks are specifically associated with the festival of the same
姓名. There is apparently an endless variety of combinations of mask
名字, festivals and mask types influenced by a multitude of histor-
ical and cultural contacts. The entire northeast area does not at this
time lend itself easily to classification, as the quantity of research in
this area is not yet sufficient (Vander Heyden 1977: 21).
Vander Heyden’s comment that there is a seemingly endless vari-
ety of combinations of mask names and festivals is key: why this
seeming proliferation? What are the underlying forms and struc-
tures that produce this seemingly confused situation noted by all
researchers on Ẹpa and Ẹpa-type masks? This paper aims to in-
vestigate the place of the object within the structure, 表现,
and cosmology of the various cult groups that this type of object—
the Ẹpa-type mask—is associated with. In turn, the paper looks
to draw upon and add to the material on Eastern Yorùbá social
组织, continuing the comparative project developed by
18 | african arts AUTUMN 2019 VOL. 52, NO. 3
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Lacking from Ojo’s broad categorization of the Ẹpa-type masks
was an attempt to try and disentangle the diversity of contexts
within which the mask—as an object—is situated.3 As noted,
within the “masking” complex known as Ẹpa there is such a diver-
sity of different-named cults for which this particular morphologi-
cal form is used that it is more useful to refer to the formal proper-
ties of these masks as Ẹpa-type rather than referencing the singular
Ẹpa. A simple survey reveals morphologically similar head cov-
erings used for ceremonies known as Ẹpa, Ęlęfòn, Erìrù, Egbùrù
Agbùrù, Arè, and Igbọle even before we reach into the proper
names ascribed to each mask or indeed include those ceremonies,
such as those performed for the deity Ògún at Ire village, that also
use morphologically similar masks.4
This paper moves from a comparative and descriptive anal-
ysis of two particular festivals before broadening toward a more
general understanding of the position of the mask within Èkìtì
and the implications that this might have for understanding the
status of this object.
THE EGBÙRÙ FESTIVAL OF IKÙN- ̣OBA
Located on the eastern fringes of Èkìtì State in southwestern
尼日利亚, Ikùn-Ọba straddles a contested cultural border between
people who define themselves as Èkìtì and those who call them-
selves Yagba or even Ìjùmú.5 A few people in Ikùn-Ọba stated that
the village was founded by refugees from the Akókó town of Ikùn,
although it is equally plausible that the village formed from refu-
gees of the shattered Ikùn-Èkìtì, which lies next to the large and
important town of Ọtun to the west. At what point the settlement
of Ikùn-Ọba occurred is unknown. The village is now located in
the Èkìtì East local government district of southwestern Nigeria. 它
straddles the main highway that runs between the large towns of
Ìkòlé and Omou (see Renne 2000). Ikùn-Ọba is now located be-
tween the village of Ilașa and Omou town; 然而, as with many
of the villages along this road and in this region, the location is rel-
atively recent, a move prompted by the building of the highway in
20世纪50年代, and it is possible that the village has moved since Allison
visited in the 1960s. The current Ikùn-Ọba is a part of Èkìtì East
district but in the past it was regarded as being on the fringes of the
Ìkòlé mini-empire known as the Egbe Ọba. Ìkòlé’s various incur-
sions into the Akókó region may suggest a plausible relationship,
but this is a history that is overlain and rewritten by the various
convulsions of the nineteenth century and the remaking of the
Èkìtì region during the competitive boundary marking that went
on between the Lagos Protectorate and Nigeria at the end of the
nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
The festival at Ikùn-Ọba that Allison’s photographs document
takes place every second year in July. As with many of the major
festivals belonging to the towns of Èkìtì, it is said to mark the new
yam harvest. The festival itself celebrates the figure of Egbùrù, A
deity variously described to me as an ẹpa, an òrìşà, an ancestor
of the town, a great warrior. The most common term used, 如何-
曾经, when describing Egbùrù was ìmólè. The term may encompass
much of the above description, but the notion of ìmólè requires
further disentangling (见下文). Cults celebrating Egbùrù are not
confined to this precise locale and are found throughout eastern
and northern Èkìtì; the name may be synonymous with, or a hom-
onym for, cults such as Agbùrù or Areù. In Ikùn, 然而, Egbùrù
4 Àwòrò dancing on the larger mound (esin).
Ikùn-Ọba, 1990.
is the name of the ìmólè, the central figure of the cult (如图. 3).
The public arena of the festival is the large open ground at the
center of the town, used as a small daily market. It is cleared and
seats are placed for the senior chiefs of the quarters involved in
the festival. Allison describes the festival being ordered by the
Onikùn—the Ọba of the town—but this was not the case in the in-
stance I witnessed: the Ọba was absent. This open space is marked
by permanent topographies and temporary structures. The perma-
nent features consist of two large, grassy mounds of roughly two
meters in height and five meters in circumference, 和之间
them stands a shrine house (ìlé ìmólè) painted with the esoteric de-
signs that are a feature of religious structures in Èkìtì. The entrance
to the ground is marked by two poles between which are strung
the ubiquitous palm fronds that mark boundaries and passages be-
tween domains. A further “gateway” marks the point where this
path enters into the forest that surrounds the village.
From the forest an àwòrò (priest) arrives; he calls to the village
and then climbs the larger of the two mounds (如图. 4). A long
VOL. 52, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2019 african arts | 19
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头, Eleṣe that of a warrior on horseback, Ọlọmọyóyó the figure
of a woman surrounded by small children, and Ológbò that of a
猫 (or leopard). It is only once these four masks have appeared
and danced around the boundary of the performing area that the
senior Egbùrù mask will appear, led into the arena by men carry-
ing màrìwò palm-frond adorned poles.
Egbùrù first salutes the mounds, stamping three times. He then
turns to leave the arena and has to be persuaded back by the priest
accompanying him.6 Eventually he takes a seat next to the assem-
bled chiefs of the town. At this point the other four masks sepa-
rate and leave the central arena. Each goes to salute the respective
àdúgbò (quarters—see below) of the town from which they have
come (如图. 5): Egúngòrò to Ijù street; Elẹṣẹ and Ológbò to Ijeru
street, which is subdivided with the Ológbò mask greeting Alámòn
street as a part of Ijeru; and Ọlọmọyóyó “greets” the Iláfè quarter.
Iláfè also claims ownership of Egbùrù but, as “king of all,” he joins
the whole town together, a statement that gains practical represen-
tation as all the masks return to sit with the Egbùrù (如图. 6).
Once all the performers have returned to their seated positions,
each is called out separately to dance with the women and children
of its own quarter. Each dances to three separate drum rhythms—
the first is persuasive, imploring the seated mask to dance; 这
第二, when the performer stands, is explosive, the mask rushing
wildly around and spinning while its supporters surround it. 这
third is slower, allowing the audience to sing oríkì and petition the
masks. Finally the Egbùrù completes the same set of moves and
steps and, once finished, the masks all retain their seats. Attendant
chiefs at this point make short speeches and then once again each
mask dances, this time around the main arena and then circling
the shrine house. These dances are done in procession, 女性
and children following the mask of their quarter, chanting its oríkì,
and looking not to get in its way. The masks then depart and only
Egbùrù is left; 最后, he dances in front of the shrine house and,
as he does so, the child that has been locked inside emerges, 到
be immediately surrounded by five àwòrò who beat the ground
around him with irùkèrè flywhisks. Egbùrù rushes back to the
bush, followed by the priests carrying the child, its head hidden
and wrapped in white cloth.
The following day all four of the lesser masks return. They come
to the town together and there is no set dance. Each rushes around
the central area of the town in a wild manner, followed by groups
of children. The chaotic melee is only calmed by the emergence of
Egbùrù, who dances to the four corners of the town, while the four
other masks assemble at the shrine house. Each enters it, 并在
that moment the priest of Egbùrù comes to the center of the com-
pound and offers prayer and blessing to the people. Once again
he climbs the larger mound and swirls around as the drums beat.
Each mask then emerges and separately dances to the top of the
mound. 最后, Egbùrù comes from the shrine house and per-
forms a spinning dance in front of its entrance. 那里, the Àwòrò
and Ológbò masks join him and they sit in front of the house.
Members of the audience, particularly women, come forward and
petition the masks for their future health and happiness (如图. 7).
Mask and priest discuss each case, with the petitioner kneeling
before them. Once all those who wish to have completed their pe-
titions, the masks dance back to the forest, Egbùrù at the rear. 这
festival is over and Egbùrù will not return for two years.
5 Elese and Olomoyóyó masks dancing. Ikùn-Ọba,
1990.
blast on a horn “trumpet” announces the beginning of the festival.
Immediately two further àwòrò come from the bush, carrying a
sheet that covers the head of a small child running between them.
The child is hurried to the shrine house, which he enters, and is not
seen until the very end of the day. This is the alágbálé, the child that
“sweeps the road” for his elders, but is also a symbolic marker of
the relationship between the festival and its place in fertility rites.
Once the child has entered the shrine house, the masks arrive
from the surrounding forest. They have been there since early
早晨, preparing and making sacrifices at the shrine of Egbùrù
in the bush—the home of Egbùrù (ìlé Egbùrù). Each appears sep-
arately from the forest, preceded by a man beating out rhythm
on a hand-held slit gong. The initial four masks to appear are
named: Egúngòrò, Elẹṣẹ, Ọlọmọyóyó, and Ológbò. 这些中的每一个
masks has a similar pot-shaped head covering, carved as a face,
but the superstructures differ. Egúngòrò’s is that of a woman’s
20 | african arts AUTUMN 2019 VOL. 52, NO. 3
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6 The seated Egbùrù and accompanying
masks. Ikùn-Ọba, 1990.
THE ATTRACTION OF LOCUST BEAN CAKES
The people of Ikùn-Ọba are both justifiably proud of Egbùrù
and also fully aware of the various metaphysical powers and pro-
tections that the ìmólè bestows upon them. The women kneeling
before the figure understand implicitly that, if their petitions are
answered within the two-year period before the next appearance,
they will make sacrifice in answer to Egbùrù’s interventions. 然而
Ikùn-Ọba does not claim sole prerogative on the manifestation
of Egbùrù. When asked where Egbùrù came from, the answers
ranged from Ợrun (heaven) or the forest, but most people will-
ingly recalled that he came to Ikùn from the neighboring village of
Ilaṣa. They proudly declared that they had Egbùrù because he had
visited their village from Ilaṣa, and that he had decided to remain,
favoring Ikùn over Ilaṣa because he liked a the locust bean (irú)
cakes given to him there.7
In Ilaṣa village they do not dispute the fact that Egbùrù went to
Ikùn-Ọba and remained there, although the duration of the visit
is disputed; for some it was only a momentary thing, for others a
permanent removal. Egbùrù is, 然而, still a feature of the ritual
calendar in Ilaṣa and he manifests in rituals and performances that
are still carried out in that village. 这里, 尽管, the presence and
performance of Egbùrù is confined to one particular quarter of the
town and the festival in his honor is of a smaller scale than that of
Ikùn Ọba. In Ilaṣa I was told that, “each quarter has its own festival,
and that Egbùrù is the ìmólè of Iro street [quarter].”
As in Ikùn-Ọba, Egbùrù in Ilaṣa arrives in the form of an Ẹpa-
type mask. A single secondary mask, Ọlọmọyóyó, accompanies
他. The morphology of Egbùrù here is radically different (Figs.
8–11). The headpiece retains a Janus-faced base, but above and
blending with this is a form of box-shaped structure, onto which
are written the words, ‘Eégún Iro. Odun Yii A san wa. Amin.”
(Eegun Iro. This year, we are paying. Amin.) Inside this “box” are
placed two circular mirrors, and it is supported by two schematic
figures that may be dogs or horses. A third, 人类, figure at the
back perches as if holding on to the mask, and from the back two
arms carrying cutlasses wrap around the side. Two further mirrors
are attached to the box. The whole is painted in red, 白色的, 和
black gloss paint and the headpiece is surmounted by the black tail
feathers of the gray plantain eater (Crinifer piscator).
Ọlọmọyóyó is also Janus-faced, dog-eared, and with rounded
mirrors that sit on the forehead above the carved facial features of
both faces. The superstructure here is, as the name suggests, of a
woman. The figure is carved from the waist upwards, with promi-
nent breasts and outstretched arms that hold cutlasses. The larger
female figure is surrounded by three full-length male figures, 一
of which is playing a flute. Again the whole is painted in red, 白色的,
and black gloss paint.
VOL. 52, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2019 african arts | 21
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7 Woman petitioning the seated Egbùrù. Ikùn-Ọba, 1990.
These differences in mask morphology are also reflected in dif-
ferences in performance. Ilaṣa’s festival is less structured than that
of Ikùn Ọba. Early in the morning, sacrifice is made over the masks
(as objects) and they are then taken into the forest. In the early af-
ternoon the masks appear together, arriving from the bush along
one of the central farm roads, passing under the familiar palm-
fronded gateway. 然而, rather than entering the town directly,
they deviate into the interstitial back streets of Iro quarter, 在职的
through the narrow “loins” (passages) between compounds, 直到
emerging at the central road of Iro.8 A large crowd welcomes them.
Finally they dance toward the main compound of Iro, that of
the Oniro, the báálé (head or king) of Iro. Here the civic chiefs
of the quarter are assembled around the báálé. Both Egbùrù and
Ọlọmọyóyó dance in front of the seated dignitaries, 而女性
continue chanting and singing the oríkì of the masquerade fig-
ures and also of Iro quarter. Egbùrù dances backwards toward the
seated chiefs, who produce money from a calabash. The Oniro,
with the mask facing with its back to him, then ties a black chicken
(adiye dudu) into the palm fronds at the back of the costume.9 At
this point the masquerade walks away from the chiefs and the
crowd erupts into joyous shouts of “Olè! Olè! Olè! Oooo!” (Thief,
22 | african arts AUTUMN 2019 VOL. 52, NO. 3
thief, thief, oooo!).10 The masks dance into the crowd, and as they
do women approach them and tie knots of cloth containing their
petitions for the future into the trailing palm fronds of the mas-
querade. 最后, accompanied by small children, the two figures
walk back into the alleyways and then to the forest.
THE PART AND THE WHOLE: THE
STRUCTURAL POSITION OF ẸPA-TYPE
MASQUERADE IN ÈKÌTÌ
Both festivals present a varied terrain of symbolic and meta-
phorical idiom. The specific actions and moments of ritual drama
outline a rich cosmological space. From the specific paths taken,
the forms of dance step at each moment, the nature and forms of
the sacrificial gift, through to the use of specific feathers, the color
of the cockerel and of the cloth used to wrap the departing child:
all work within the idioms of Yorùbá belief. Centrally it is the pres-
ence of the masks, the wood-carved objects, which attract most
注意力. In each festival, the themes that Ojo (1978) outlines
are visible. In each, the image of warrior on horseback, 母亲
surrounded by her children, animals from the bush—metaphors
of warfare, 暴力, and renewal—are carried into the town in
the form of the mask.
The imagery of the masks, as Ojo suggests, make reference to a
general history of turbulence and warfare in Èkìtì.11 More immedi-
ately, it is clear that within both festivals there is a generalized sense
of reinvigorating the community, whether through reinforcing the
boundaries of each place or through bringing metaphysical powers
into the town, a source of renewal.
Clearly there is also, in the comparison between these two fes-
tivals, an underlying history of relationship. In both towns it is
clearly acknowledged that Egbùrù comes from Ilaṣa and that Ikùn-
Ọba “captured” him through their superior locust bean cakes.
Egbùrù is capable, 它似乎, of existing (in different form) 之内
both towns. This myth of division suggests that a specific history is
implied within the running of the ritual.
Grasping the precise position of these histories and their place
within the structural terms of Yorùbá towns relies upon the anal-
ysis of these festivals stepping away from both the metaphorical
and the mythological to allow a synchronic and comparative per-
观望的. Understanding the structural dynamics of Egbùrù (和
Ẹpa-type festivals more widely) complements and broadens the
historical narrative.
Andrew Apter describes the pattern of political segmentation
that defines the small northern Èkìtì kingdom of Ișan (about thirty
miles west of Ikùn-Ọba). In the context of this paper, it is his de-
scription of the cult organization of the Irefin quarter of Ișan vil-
lage that is pertinent. 这里, Ẹpa is one of three major cults—Irefin
patriclan are greeted as Omo Ẹpa (children of Ẹpa), yet each of the
three subquarters of Irefin have their own specific Ẹpa masks and
associated oríkì; each ìlé in the quarter has their own manifesta-
tion of the Ẹpa cult. Apter argues that here the Ẹpa cult organiza-
tion represents “the unity of the quarter as identity-in-difference”
(Apter 1995: 384). More poetically, Irefin’s Ẹpa worshipers “liken it
to a hand (ọwọ) with fingers (ìka)” (Apter 1995: 384).
I encountered a similar description while documenting the fes-
tival of Eyelokun (or Eyeboko) in the village of Itapa, Ișan’s close
neighbor.12 The Ẹpa festival here, part of a larger ritual complex
within the town, is centered on the àdúgbò of Egbe, which is itself
divided into the ìlé (streets) of Iliya, Idofin, Egena, Idògúnja, Isaba,
and Ilosun. The central figure of the cult is Yeyelókun (a manifesta-
tion of Olókun) and the primary act of this festival is the carrying
of Yeyelókun from the forest into the town (Owoeye 1999: 49). 她
manifests in the form of a carving, one that absolutely resembles
the superstructure of the Ẹpa masks but without the lower “mask”
element. Wrapped in a white cloth, Yeyelókun is carried on the
head of the (disguised) àwòrò into the center of the town, momen-
tarily displayed in front of the seated owatapa—the ọba—and then
carried around Egbe quarter before being deposited in her shrine.
After her appearance the village erupts with performance of Ẹpa-
type masks. In a reflection of the comment documented by Apter,
I was told that, “just as a mother has sons,” so each of the “streets”
of Egbe quarter have Ẹpa-type masks.
Before each ìlé carries out its performance, sacrifices are made
at shrines that initially seem scattered at random (often a pile of
stones or a cement-covered mound), but which, when seen in
the context of the festival, are actually placed in front of (或奥卡-
sionally within) the central compound of the lineage. Before the
appearance of the masks the young men and women attached to
each compound move around the “street,” beating the ground with
palm fronds. Eventually the masks appear, each coming from the
ìlé to which they belong and each accompanied by singing and
chanting members of their compounds.
Apter’s (1995) primary concern is with the relationship between
political authority and cult organization; his work, 然而, reveals
the constitution of these festivals as they relate to town structure.
The basis of Yorùbá social organization, 小镇 (ìlú), is a social
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8 Egbùrù in Ilaṣa, 1991.
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unit of considerable complexity and has led to disputes in the an-
thropological literature over what exactly constitutes the social
unit that forms the basis of town organization. Barber (1991) 优惠
the most comprehensive survey of the different approaches, 但
her basic starting point is quite striking in its descriptive simplicity,
Historical narratives … represented the town as a collection of ile,
each coming from a different place of origin and each having its own
traditions: and these separate units were pictured as being held to-
gether by their common allegiance to the Ọba who was descended
from the founder of the town (Barber 1991: 135).
The Ọba (king) is supported by a council of chiefs (the Íwárẹfà),
who represent the nonroyal lineages of the town—usually sepa-
rated into lineage groupings known as àdúgbò or quarters (一个
anglicized definition that disguises considerable complexity).
Quarters maybe divided in turn into smaller sublineage segments,
with associated political titles as subchiefs to the quarter chief. 这
most basic element at the base of this structure is the lineage (ídìlé)
or family compound—literally the house—known as ìlé. The clas-
sic model of Yorùbá social organization as expressed by Lloyd
VOL. 52, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2019 african arts | 23
Apter argues that the primary character of ìlé is fluidity. Far
from being determined by familial relationships, the Yorùbá house
(in both its literal, physical sense and its genealogical meaning)
is a flexible and open “space” that can adjust to change and new
membership. 在这个, 他认为, the house reflects the nature of the
Yorùbá town. Drawing upon Barber’s demonstration that, 在
heart of oríkì ìlé (the central poetic charter of each family), is ref-
erence to towns of origin, Apter suggests that at the foundations
of lineage identity is not familial kinship identity per se, 反而
the town of family origin. 的确, Apter goes further, inverting the
relationship between town and house, suggesting that rather than
seeing ìlé as the primary building blocks of the town (ìlú), as Lloyd
would have it, it is the very nature of the towns within ìlé that is
important to the Yorùbá polity. Understanding the place of the
town(s) at the heart of ìlé has radical implications for Apter’s mod-
eling of Yorùbá social organization, on both sides of the Atlantic.
The paradigm shift Apter proposes in respect to the incorpora-
tive flexibility of the Yorùbá lineage noted by Barber (1991: 164) 关于-
thinks the constitution of the Yorùbá town. Rather than seeing the
town as an additive construction of segmented groups—a series
of ìlé (lineages), forming àdúgbò (groupings of related lineages),
forming ìlú (城市)—Apter suggests that the model misreads
Yorùbá notions of quantification. Rather than an additive number
理论, it is modes of division that are important. Couched in this
方式, Apter suggests that each quarter or even ìlé contains a town. 它
is the model that he draws upon to reach this conclusion that is of
interest in our understanding of the Ẹpa-type masquerade.
Apter draws upon the work of Helen Verran (2001), 尤其
the concept she names the “sortal particular.” It is a concept that
marks a difference between Yorùbá and European counting—a
difference not only in the semantics of number, but also in think-
ing about things. Verran’s exegesis is complex and detailed, relying
on a close reading of Yorùbá language and number terms, but in
essence it details the conceptual basis by which the Yorùbá account
for the manifestation of things in the world. She notes,
[我]n Yorùbá language and culture … things, objects and numbers
in the world are conceived as “sortal particulars,” qualitative forms
of “thinghood” that infuse the universe and manifest themselves in
different modes at particular times and places. Sortal particulars can
manifest themselves within a plurality of objects that form what we
would see as members of a set, but the “objects” themselves are sec-
ondary to the sortal particular which they instantiate … number in
Yorùbá language talk is a degree of dividedness (Verran 2001: 198).
The implications, for Apter, 是 (very basically) that each ìlé in
each Yorùbá town (or at least Èkìtì town) is itself a manifestation
of a town of origin; that kept in the oríkì ìlé is the knowledge of
places of origin.14 Apter goes onto describe the ìlé as a potential
sociological manifestation of the ìlú that it manifests, 完全的
with political title, agnatic and nonagnatic kin, 陌生人, 所以
在. 重要的, it will also contain deities and associated ritual
paraphernalia from the original town, which invoke and manifest
during those sanctioned times of ritual renewal.
Jane Guyer (2017) also picks up on the implications of Verran’s
work for the understanding of Yorùbá logics (and in particular,
those transactional and performative logics of the Yorùbá moral
经济). She notes that in Verran’s account of numbering,
number links unity to plurality as either one/many or as part/
9 Olomoyóyó and Egbùrù in Ilaṣa. 1991.
(1954, 1962, 1966) suggested that towns were the outcome and
expression of domestic social organization; localized agnatic lin-
eages serving as the dominant segmentary building blocks within
城市. Lloyd proposes that, from this basic organization, 复杂的
kingdoms developed.
A number of authors have complicated Lloyd’s model of Yorùbá
组织. The term ídìlé is used to describe lineage, yet the
more common term used is ìlé. The word means “compound,
dwelling place, 房子,” but as with aristocratic English usage,
the term “house” can also imply a family. Thus ìlé are both living
地方, with corporate rights to land and tangible and intangible
财产, and in common usage, the word also identifies family
and lineage. 13 Authors such as Eades (1980) placed emphasis upon
the compound as a place of common residence.
Developing this view, Apter’s (2013) review of Yorùbá urban
social structure shows that Lloyd fails to fully grasp the complex
clustering of different participant groups in and around the ìlé
(房子). Addressing the complexity of Yorùbá lineage structure, 他
argues that residential units are “an admixture of relational types,
residential and lineal, consanguinal and affinal, core and stranger,
freeborn and slave” (Apter 2013: 360).
24 | african arts AUTUMN 2019 VOL. 52, NO. 3
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whole. Things counted can, 然后, also be thought of as manifesting
within these particular modes. 这是, as with Apter’s discussion of
the household, possible to be both a singularity and part of a wider
plurality, but the regression is into particularity rather than that of
the general—a logic presupposed on the nature of division noted
by Verran. 钥匙, as Guyer notes, is that the history and poten-
tial of things is always kept “in play.” For Guyer, 影响,
drawn from Verran, are that
the contingency of the moment, as a punctuation point, 在哪里
objects/subjects (are narrated) as outcomes of past collective go-
ing-ons and recognize their participation in remaking particular
times and places as (关于) generating worlds (Verran 2001: 94, quoted
in Guyer 2017: 158).
These suggestions begin to offer a model against which the in-
terpretation of Ẹpa and Ẹpa-type performances can be situated. 如果,
following Apter, we understand that each ìlé is actually a manifes-
tation of an originary town, then it is clear that each household
有, clustered inside it, the tutelary deity of that town. It is the
town’s founding ancestor within the household, a figure to which
both households (and towns) pay annual or biannual homage. 这
multiplicity of Ẹpa-type masks would then seem to correspond to
the notion that each “house” owns the mask in homage to their
own founding presence. Structurally each festival reproduces the
politics of the àdúgbò, revolving around the major deity (ìmólè or
òrìşà) belonging to the dominant ìlé within the quarter. Yet each ìlé
also brings a foundational ancestral presence into play, albeit one
that sits subordinate to the dominant house of the quarter.15 Nested
within the cult of the dominant ìmólè and incorporated into its
ritual domain are those that belong to lesser ìlé. Thus each mask
can be conceived of as a division, a fragment or sortal particular of
the primary mask. Each festival is structured around the primary
figure, and that figure divides into smaller constituent parts.
The question is complicated by the actual nature of what is
manifested within these festivals. Apter consistently refers to òrìşà
when naming the deities within his sociology whereas, on asking
what these things were, the term I encountered most often in Èkìtì
was ìmólè. (更确切地说, the term was “ìmólè ni”: “it is ìmólè”).
In this region, òrìşà, when referred to at all, named a very specific
figure: Òrìşà Ojúná/Iwákún, a manifestation of Òrìşàn’la. 的确,
even Ògún, habitually referred to in the literature as the òrìşà of
iron, was not, in this part of Èkìtì, regarded as òrìşà per se; 相当,
as I was told, “Ògún is all around, wherever there is metal,” and yet
Ògún also had precise manifestation as Ògún Ìkòlé, which people
in that town differentiated from the more well-known Ògún Ire.16
Egbùrù (as with Ẹpa, Elefon, Agùrù, 等人) is described as ìmólè.
Abrahams (1962) defines ìmólè as earth spirits, a notion that has
had a fairly wide airing in literature about the Yorùbá, 其中
notion of ìmólè (or ùmólè) has tended to refer to a form of primor-
dial deity. Idowu suggests (1962: 61) that ìmólè offers a contrac-
tion of Emọ tí mbẹ n’ilẹ, “the supernormal beings of the earth.” The
name he suggests connotes awesomeness, eeriness, the mysterium
tremendum in distinction to the “somewhat prosaic and homely”
òrìşà. Idowu goes onto argue that the word is “a designation for the
dreadful ones whose habitations were the thick dark groves and un-
usual places: those who walk the world of men at night and prowl
the place at noonday; the very thought of whom was hair-raising”
10 Olomoyóyó in Ilaṣa: rear view. 1991.
(Idowu 1962: 62). Peel (2003: 347, ff160) 笔记, 然而, 那
Idowu ultimately concedes that the term has become somewhat
more prosaic and synonymous with the term òrìşà, and in turn it
is “an old generic term for subordinate deities” (Peel 2003: 118).17
There is certainly something of these accounts in the way that
ìmólè were described to me. The nature of the deity, unlike the de-
scriptions of òrìşà in the more central empires, appears to be one
of close relationship with humans. Rather than separation in some
more distant place, ìmólè seemingly inhabit an almost shared space
with humans. The impression I received was of very real figures,
inhabiting a life of routine and humanity, tending to farms within
the forests or hills, removed from but in close relation to the ac-
tivities of human life. The primordial connection with the earth is
more clearly established by the fact that, 经常, ìmólè are described
as the founding figures.18 As such they are the primordial ancestors
of particular and discrete communities.
The concept is further complicated by the fact that material
things were often also described as ìmólè. The description of the
material object as ìmólè is one that sits at the heart of the analysis
of the Ẹpa and the various cults that are associated with this type
of performance; in particular it questions the status of the mate-
rial object most often associated with these displays: the masks.
皮克顿, in his seminal paper on masks, hints at the possibility in
VOL. 52, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2019 african arts | 25
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反过来, the performance of Ẹpa-type ceremonies acts as another
illustration of the logic that Verran outlines and which Apter draws
之上. Working from the model of the sortal particular, wherein
“things, 物体, and numbers are qualitative forms of ‘thinghood’
and which manifest themselves in different modes at particular
times and places,” the notion that the Ẹpa-type masquerade is a
singular individual object (a mask, for instance) needs to be re-
想法. Instead of the discrete singular, they need to be regarded
as instantiations of the primary ìmólè—in this instance that of par-
ticular ìmólè. 更远, if we hold with this logic, it is plausible to
suggest that Egbùrù, 例如, not only manifests within a sin-
gular mask, but that during the festival he actually manifests in five
different ways: not as five different individual masks, but rather as
Egbùrù decomposed or differentiated into five.
Couched this way, the seemingly static form of Ẹpa festivals ac-
tually opens to a more dynamic reading, one in which histories of
agglomeration and fracture operate in the same manner that Apter
suggests for households. Festivals (and the cult) are open to accu-
模拟, just as they are to decomposition. 这里, Guyer’s reading
of Verran makes sense: “Routine should not be understood as a
repetition of outcome but a reprise of method. It is an unending
reapplication of past realizations to present potentials for theoreti-
cally limitless permutation and logic” (Guyer 2017: 158).
This does not deny the embedded historical logics of the Ẹpa-
type festivals that Ojo points to—indeed, it captures the very his-
torical contingency that these festivals seem to present—but rather
than a stasis of form and structure, a routine replication, Guyer’s
understanding allows for a more performative, fluid understand-
ing of that history, one that, 例如, could see the develop-
ment of a festival structure based on little more than “a liking for
locust bean cakes (!).” It is the incorporative fluid logic that Apter
points to in the constitution of the household. 然而, as with oríkì-ìlé,
the ìmólè, the ancestral figure stands as a stable core at the center.
Guyer’s argument allows one more (short) interjection on the
temporal moment, what might be named anticipatory time. Ẹpa-
type festivals take place every two years. It is a temporal gap into
which time is given over to the resolution of the petitioning that
forms the final act of Ẹpa-type festivals. It is in the anticipation
of things to come—whether better health, the birth of children,
protection from invasion—that provides these festivals with
their raison d’etre. While there is, embedded in the very form of
these festivals, the historical relationships between households as
they sit in political relationship to one another, differential tem-
poral moments are activated within the festival. They look to
the future as much as the past. Ẹpa-type festivals bring the very
foundation of the household into actual lived conjunction and re-
lationship with the members of that household. Certainly this is
a moment of memorialization, and yet the mask types, 然而
monumental, are more than aides-memoire—they act as the active
anticipation of hope.
In this sense it is with Guyer’s commentary (alongside the wider
argument that she makes) that we might begin to allow a consid-
eration of both the mask as material object in relation to a meta-
physic and the position of the festival in the performance of Èkìtì
historical consciousness. In the actual performance of the festivals
another temporal consciousness is “played” out—one that looks,
not to an historical past, but to an imagined future.
11 Egbùrù in Ilaṣa: rear view. 1991.
Ẹpa-type masks when he categorizes them under his Type III:
masks that create dramatic distance, but which may be regarded
as literal embodiments of metaphysical powers. The thing itself is
where the energies lie. “What matters in this case is the visible tan-
gible reality of the artefact. The mask reveals rather than conceals”
(皮克顿 1990: 193).
Ẹpa-type masks are the literal manifestation of ìmólè. 问题-
tion that this raises is then about the manifest status of the mask;
does the ìmólè reside in the mask or are these performances actu-
ally concerned with the manifestation of ìmólè? Unlike the Egígún
(Egúngún) masquerade performances of Èkìtì, where a generic
form of human ancestors is manifested (see Rea 2017), the perfor-
mances of Ẹpa-type masks are those of singular named and known
presences. Performers make little effort to conceal their identity,
for it is not important; performers are not disguising or conceal-
ing an identity that is replaced by another, rather they are carrying
the visible form of the ìmólè.19 Ẹpa-type masks are then the means
by which ìmólè, primordial ancestral figures, are made manifest.
然而, in their performance they also make manifest a history
of social relations within the towns of Èkìtì. Ẹpa-type performances
actually make present and manifest the relations that Apter docu-
ments in his understanding of the social organization of Èkìtì.
26 | african arts AUTUMN 2019 VOL. 52, NO. 3
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3
See Rea 1990—based on Picton’s field notes, 这
Ilaṣa is literally the neighboring village.
“Loins” is a Leeds term that describes the back
Notes
This paper is in many ways Janus-faced, looking both
backwards and forwards. It started as an MA project at
the Sainsbury Research Unit at UEA in 1989 并且是
completed while working as a Fellow of the SRU in 2017.
My continuity of thanks is therefore to the director of the
Sainsbury Research Unit, Professor Steven Hooper, 和
his colleagues and particularly to the librarian of the
Robert Sainsbury Library, Pat Hewitt. I would also like to
acknowledge Mr. E.O. Abejide and Mr. Kayode Owoeye
for their help in Nigeria and Professor John Picton, WHO
alerted me to Phillip Allison’s photographs.
1 This archive is now held by the Weston Library at
the University of Oxford. My thanks to Lucy McCann
for making it available to me.
2 These formally published works can be supple-
mented by a number of unpublished theses and field
笔记. E.O. Abejide’s thesis (University of Ibadan) 亲-
vides a similar survey form to that of Ojo, and my own
MA thesis was based upon John Picton’s survey notes
made while working for the National Museum in Lagos.
3 他的 1974 M.Phil thesis does provide the basis for a
more comprehensive working of the contextual condi-
tions of the festivals that he witnesses.
4
appendix to this work contains a substantial work-
ing-through of the material that Picton surveyed in the
villages of Èkìtì. By far the greatest number of “things”
he recorded were Ẹpa-type masks.
5 While maintaining cultural distinctiveness as either
Èkìtì or Yagba or Ijumu, all people in this region would
also readily acknowledge their (自己-) defined status
as Yorùbá. While there are distinct dialect differences
across this eastern region, the language used is recogniz-
ably Yorùbá.
6 The gender prefix is precise: Egburu is identified as
being male.
7
8
alleyways or ginnels that punctuate the town. It is an
appropriate description of the alleyways that punctuate
the spaces between buildings in Èkìtì towns.
9 The gesture of tying a black cockerel to the palm
fronds is found in a number of masked festivals in
Èkìtì. One explanation is that the bird replaces human
sacrifice, tied onto the back of masquerade, as a mother
would tie her child. See Rea (1995).
10 On the image of the thief, see Doris (2011) and Rea
(1995).
11
Èkìtì was a “shatter zone”—caught between the
competing interests of larger polities. Èkìtì’s distant his-
tory is that of an interior region held between the com-
peting claims of the empires of Oyo and Benin, and also
deals more locally with the intentions of their nearest
neighbors, the Ijesa (see Obayemi 1976). The nineteenth
century was then dominated by raiding and invasion,
either from the Ilorin Nupe and Fulani peoples to the
north or the Ibadan “war boys” from the south. Èkìtì
has been subject to incursion and invasion on an almost
constant basis. And yet even as the people in the region
suffered from the violence of invasion, enslavement,
and destruction, even as this was then compounded by
a reconstruction at the hands of British imperial power
that depended upon partially concocted narratives and
misplaced confidence in its own ideological model to
recreate a “primordial state” that never really existed, 这
centrality of the town remains. The effect of this turbu-
伦斯, still mentioned as being within living memory,
was that villages were left “with six men and a dog”—a
metaphor for the devastating effects the raids and inva-
sions had on the region. The towns that now make up
the region are, 部分地, the shattered remains of villages
that formed quarters within larger and more defensible
城市, refugees within kingdoms (see Akintoye 1971).
12
Itapa is a small town within the Ìk`ọlé sphere of
influence. It straddles the Ìk`ọlé Ifaki main highway and
is in close proximity to Ishan.
13 Peel notes that Lloyd’s model (developed within the
structural functional parameters of the British social
anthropology of its time) generates a model of politics
determined by kinship relations. He states, “[我]n Lloyd’s
案件, politics is reduced to kinship, for the rules of
kinship are treated as producing forms anterior to and
determinative of politics” (Peel 1983: 10).
14 Somewhat counter-intuitively, the people of Ìk`ọlé
Èkìtì, where I conducted my main fieldwork, proudly
proclaim “Ìk`ọlé Orun, Ìk`ọlé Aiye” as a statement of
Ìk`ọlé’s unitary identity. The sense of this praise fragment
is that Ìk`ọlé was never defeated; that while other towns
may have been thrown to the winds to find settlement
where they can, Ìk`ọlé has never been divided. Inherent
in the statement is also the notion that Ìk`ọlé on earth is
a mode of manifestation of Ìk`ọlé in heaven—the sortal
particular as a town!
15 It is possible that, seen this way, some of the confu-
sion about Ẹpa as an age-grade festival is resolved. 这是
the young men (and nowadays young women as well) 的
each household, rather than members of an organi-
扎化, cutting across lineages that demonstrate most
fervor in support of their masks.
16 Whether the difference between oriṣa and ìmólè is
a matter of semantics between two fieldworkers in Èkìtì
marks a distinct shift in cosmological thinking or, 作为
Idowu suggests, the two terms have become synony-
mous, does not overly worry me here (看, 然而, Rea
1995). Apter (1995: 371) notices the tendency to identify
singular figures as oriṣa associated with both particular
towns and grand political centralization. In Èkìtì, 与一个
much lesser degree of centralization and greater degree
of political fragmentation, the singular pantheon does
not exist, or at least not in the form more popularly
预期的.
17 See also Rea 2000: 165 for an account of the
terminological confusions associated with Ẹpa-type
masquerades.
18 In Ìk`ọlé the most auspicious, and most secret,
festival is that of Ìmólè Ìk`ọlé, held to celebrate the figure
of Akinsale, the legendary founder of the town.
19 的确, in a number of instances—Ishan and Itapa
for example—it is clear that the ìmólè carried in physical
form has no masklike head covering: it is purely the
sculptural form, common in the superstructure of Ẹpa
type masks, that arrives from the forest, wrapped in
white cloth. See also Thompson’s (1974) elegant descrip-
tion of the arrival of Orangun.
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VOL. 52, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2019 african arts | 27
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