FRANÇOIS NEYT
K I F W E BE
K I FWE B E
The kifwebe mask has an “otherworldly beingness,” created by its unique mix of human, animal, and supernatural spirit that expresses the spiritual essence of the Songye and Luba people of the southeastern area of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Combining the pulsating effect of a linear system of groove patterns with a powerful expression of varied emotions, their penetrating stare commands an unyielding presence. But they are so much more than what they look like—they are what they did. Recently, these masks have received increasing attention from art historians and anthropologists. This book heralds a new exploration of the kifwebe masking tradition, based on an extensive study of the outstanding Woods Davy collection in Los Angeles, California.
FRANÇOIS NEYT
A Century of Songye and Luba Masks
A Century of Songye and Luba Masks
TABLE OF CONTENTS
6 PREFACE: A CORUSCATING COLLECTION Allen F. Roberts
15 INTRODUCTION: IDENTITY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BIFWEBE BROTHERHOODS François Neyt
21 SONGYE BIFWEBE MASKS François Neyt
[25] Western Songye Masks [53] Kalebwe Masks [125] Eastern Songye Masks 185 BIFWEBE: FROM THE SONGYE TO THE EASTERN LUBA AND ZELA François Neyt
[187] [225] [250] [288]
Eastern Luba Masks Shields, Panels, Charms, and Amulets Zoomorphic Masks Dances, Music, and Costumes
301 BIFWEBE: THINKING AND OBSERVING [302] Thinking with Masks: Surveying the Literature on Bifwebe Kevin D. Dumouchelle
[321] A Sculptor’s Observations Woods Davy
[349] The Outlier: A Wedge of Eastern Kasai H. Kellim Brown
353 PROVENANCES 361 BIBLIOGRAPHY 366 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
6 PREFACE: A CORUSCATING COLLECTION Allen F. Roberts
15 INTRODUCTION: IDENTITY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BIFWEBE BROTHERHOODS François Neyt
21 SONGYE BIFWEBE MASKS François Neyt
[25] Western Songye Masks [53] Kalebwe Masks [125] Eastern Songye Masks 185 BIFWEBE: FROM THE SONGYE TO THE EASTERN LUBA AND ZELA François Neyt
[187] [225] [250] [288]
Eastern Luba Masks Shields, Panels, Charms, and Amulets Zoomorphic Masks Dances, Music, and Costumes
301 BIFWEBE: THINKING AND OBSERVING [302] Thinking with Masks: Surveying the Literature on Bifwebe Kevin D. Dumouchelle
[321] A Sculptor’s Observations Woods Davy
[349] The Outlier: A Wedge of Eastern Kasai H. Kellim Brown
353 PROVENANCES 361 BIBLIOGRAPHY 366 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
a sense consumed by visitors’ eyes and caressed by their gaze. Yet looking is a culturally determined activity of visuality with its own expectations, limitations, capabilities, and epiphanies varying from one community to another. In many cases, staring at works is not the intended experience for which they were produced and used in original settings.”3 As Susan Vogel might add, “an explicit etiquette of the gaze is at play in everyday life as well as the special moments when sacred objects are displayed or performed.” While these days bifwebe perform in well-lit settings for popular audiences, was this always the case? Or was coruscation increased by the shifting shadows of bonfires, leaving one far less certain of exactly what one was experiencing? Given their unearthly properties, did one dare stare at bifwebe? Or was glimpsing them more than sufficient for most observers and too much for some? Even when light was bright, “works may be made by artists with 6 skill and inspired brilliance, [but] they are not necessarily for human eyes alone, or even primarily so” (M. N. Roberts 2017: 61, citing Vogel 1998: 110). Who else may have gazed upon bifwebe then, and for what reasons? Spirits inhere in bifwebe—they reside in them, that is. What might they see as they gaze at audiences from behind the thresholds of masks? And if the term “mask” casually refers to an object covering the face and/or head of a performer, following Songye and related epistemologies bifwebe also include synesthetic totalities of “tactility and tonality, olfactory and gustatory dimensions.” Such dimensions lend themselves to the intentionalities of a given performance through costuming, choreography, musical accompaniments, and much more.4 In the past and perhaps sometimes still, bifwebe performed as the very serious business of local-level politics was negotiated. In all likelihood, as among neighboring Luba, visual and performance arts of bifwebe were mnemonic, bringing pertinent recollections to bear upon current events even as new histories were proposed to meet evolving needs (see Roberts and Roberts 1996). Would that we knew more about such cultural dynamism! In this regard though, consider how in earlier times, as Dunja Hersak explains, bifwebe masqueraders served as “anonymous agents of the political elite” of Songye society, “resolving social tensions and enforcing allegiance” through exercise of arcane powers.5 In the politically charged contexts of performance, bifwebe were “perceived as supernatural creatures from the mountains and the wilderness” who are “neither exclusively human, animal, nor spirit, yet they embody attributes of all three.” Their presence affirmed authority, and bifwebe menaced any who would oppose those in power through the maelstrom of meaning of the masks’ complex iconography activated during and brought to bear upon particular performance events. Hersak reports that the right side of a kifwebe mask refers to the sun, the left to the moon.6 The chin is the snout of a crocodile and its raffia beard a lion’s mane. Its mouth may be the beak of a bird or “the flame of a sorcerer.”7 Its nostrils are the apertures of a locally crafted iron-smelting furnace (see A. F. Roberts 2019), and its eyes are swollen like those of malicious persons. Striations covering the surface are associated with zebra stripes in a pattern called “something transformed.” Rooster plumes extend the head and sagittal crest, introducing the cock-of-dawn’s rhythms and references to earliest light, hence enlightenment. A masker’s neck is associated with bees, while the breast of his costume refers to constellations of stars. Skins covering his hips are leaves of a particular tree (undoubtedly of medicinal and perhaps other potencies), even as each pelt bears particular reference to attributes and powers of the animal from which it has been robbed. The cord around the performer’s waist is understood to be a serpent—and possibly the most extraordinary
10 KIFWEBE
6. Brachycerus apterus, pen-and-ink drawing by Allen F. Roberts, 1979 7. Detail showing dried test of a weevil, filled with potent ingredients to protect the performer and further the interests of those sponsoring his performance
7
of such beings who is associated with the rainbow and seasonal transformation. The dancer’s legs are mortar and pestle, and their pounding rhythms refer to both domesticity and sexuality, while his leggings are the limbs of an elephant and, in poetic contrast, their stitching “fleas.” In the flashpoint creation of such a collage, every conceivable power and circumstance is elicited, as activated by capacities that are less evident or deeply secret to all but the most knowledgeable.8 Woe to anyone sufficiently hubristic to challenge the wielding of such awesome capacities that threaten to fly off in all directions at once. To redirect a Surrealist thought, a kifwebe mask is “magnificent in its shock and irreverence,” for however terrifying, it must convey the fervent hope that “the creation of the world is not yet finished” (Simic 1993: 30). Again as Surrealists might have had it, the preposterous pastiche of bifwebe probably provoked “manifestations of extraordinary realities” through “sensual derangements,” “the instability of appearances,” “analytic decomposition of reality,” and “aggressive incongruities.”9 And to return to visuality and what one may see and know, we are left to wonder if “the action of seeing is really about what we see, or rather what we could see, might see, and what we cannot physically see but can only imagine in the mind’s eye” (M. N. Roberts 2017: 62). “Deep examination” of bifwebe in the Davy Collection “reveals more than one sees at first look” then, as Woods aptly notes. A mask may be an especially well-executed example of its genre, but when the netting of the upper costume is scrutinized, one may glimpse an altogether odd addition: the desiccated, red-spotted head of a large, hard-shelled weevil called Brachycerus apterus in Latin, or kafwabubela in the language of Tabwa people culturally related to the Songye and Eastern Luba10 (figs. 6–7). Although the device is sufficiently small and so inconspicuous that it may not be noticed, it contributes mightily to the kifwebe’s impact. The kafwabubela, too, holds a veritable storm of potencies derived from herbal and other natural substances, as well as vizimba activating agents drawn from human experience. Tabwa understand such a bundle to be a “little world” of their own confection, meant to work to its owner’s advantage in ways things “ought” to be but so rarely are without supernatural intervention. Yet the little world’s ingredients are by no means iconic—that is, even if one scrutinizes them, the crumbs, shavings, and merest hints of contents defy identification. In a way, what is included is far less significant than what might be. This is the nature of secrecy, of course (see Nooter 1992), and the bundle’s awesome powers, contributing to those of the kifwebe as performed, were/are greater than any of its parts or, indeed, of their sum. Last words: bifwebe possess and project an “affecting presence” (Armstrong 1971), and they “lead vigorous, clamorous lives” as they “hypnotize … and cry out, answering prayers and making demands” (Cotter 1997). Such are their attractions that it is easy to imagine the Davys’ fellowship with them. Years ago, the French philosopher and “subversive humanist” Gaston Bachelard urged his readers to “live close to familiar, everyday things” so as to “live slowly, thanks to their
PREFACE
11
a sense consumed by visitors’ eyes and caressed by their gaze. Yet looking is a culturally determined activity of visuality with its own expectations, limitations, capabilities, and epiphanies varying from one community to another. In many cases, staring at works is not the intended experience for which they were produced and used in original settings.”3 As Susan Vogel might add, “an explicit etiquette of the gaze is at play in everyday life as well as the special moments when sacred objects are displayed or performed.” While these days bifwebe perform in well-lit settings for popular audiences, was this always the case? Or was coruscation increased by the shifting shadows of bonfires, leaving one far less certain of exactly what one was experiencing? Given their unearthly properties, did one dare stare at bifwebe? Or was glimpsing them more than sufficient for most observers and too much for some? Even when light was bright, “works may be made by artists with 6 skill and inspired brilliance, [but] they are not necessarily for human eyes alone, or even primarily so” (M. N. Roberts 2017: 61, citing Vogel 1998: 110). Who else may have gazed upon bifwebe then, and for what reasons? Spirits inhere in bifwebe—they reside in them, that is. What might they see as they gaze at audiences from behind the thresholds of masks? And if the term “mask” casually refers to an object covering the face and/or head of a performer, following Songye and related epistemologies bifwebe also include synesthetic totalities of “tactility and tonality, olfactory and gustatory dimensions.” Such dimensions lend themselves to the intentionalities of a given performance through costuming, choreography, musical accompaniments, and much more.4 In the past and perhaps sometimes still, bifwebe performed as the very serious business of local-level politics was negotiated. In all likelihood, as among neighboring Luba, visual and performance arts of bifwebe were mnemonic, bringing pertinent recollections to bear upon current events even as new histories were proposed to meet evolving needs (see Roberts and Roberts 1996). Would that we knew more about such cultural dynamism! In this regard though, consider how in earlier times, as Dunja Hersak explains, bifwebe masqueraders served as “anonymous agents of the political elite” of Songye society, “resolving social tensions and enforcing allegiance” through exercise of arcane powers.5 In the politically charged contexts of performance, bifwebe were “perceived as supernatural creatures from the mountains and the wilderness” who are “neither exclusively human, animal, nor spirit, yet they embody attributes of all three.” Their presence affirmed authority, and bifwebe menaced any who would oppose those in power through the maelstrom of meaning of the masks’ complex iconography activated during and brought to bear upon particular performance events. Hersak reports that the right side of a kifwebe mask refers to the sun, the left to the moon.6 The chin is the snout of a crocodile and its raffia beard a lion’s mane. Its mouth may be the beak of a bird or “the flame of a sorcerer.”7 Its nostrils are the apertures of a locally crafted iron-smelting furnace (see A. F. Roberts 2019), and its eyes are swollen like those of malicious persons. Striations covering the surface are associated with zebra stripes in a pattern called “something transformed.” Rooster plumes extend the head and sagittal crest, introducing the cock-of-dawn’s rhythms and references to earliest light, hence enlightenment. A masker’s neck is associated with bees, while the breast of his costume refers to constellations of stars. Skins covering his hips are leaves of a particular tree (undoubtedly of medicinal and perhaps other potencies), even as each pelt bears particular reference to attributes and powers of the animal from which it has been robbed. The cord around the performer’s waist is understood to be a serpent—and possibly the most extraordinary
10 KIFWEBE
6. Brachycerus apterus, pen-and-ink drawing by Allen F. Roberts, 1979 7. Detail showing dried test of a weevil, filled with potent ingredients to protect the performer and further the interests of those sponsoring his performance
7
of such beings who is associated with the rainbow and seasonal transformation. The dancer’s legs are mortar and pestle, and their pounding rhythms refer to both domesticity and sexuality, while his leggings are the limbs of an elephant and, in poetic contrast, their stitching “fleas.” In the flashpoint creation of such a collage, every conceivable power and circumstance is elicited, as activated by capacities that are less evident or deeply secret to all but the most knowledgeable.8 Woe to anyone sufficiently hubristic to challenge the wielding of such awesome capacities that threaten to fly off in all directions at once. To redirect a Surrealist thought, a kifwebe mask is “magnificent in its shock and irreverence,” for however terrifying, it must convey the fervent hope that “the creation of the world is not yet finished” (Simic 1993: 30). Again as Surrealists might have had it, the preposterous pastiche of bifwebe probably provoked “manifestations of extraordinary realities” through “sensual derangements,” “the instability of appearances,” “analytic decomposition of reality,” and “aggressive incongruities.”9 And to return to visuality and what one may see and know, we are left to wonder if “the action of seeing is really about what we see, or rather what we could see, might see, and what we cannot physically see but can only imagine in the mind’s eye” (M. N. Roberts 2017: 62). “Deep examination” of bifwebe in the Davy Collection “reveals more than one sees at first look” then, as Woods aptly notes. A mask may be an especially well-executed example of its genre, but when the netting of the upper costume is scrutinized, one may glimpse an altogether odd addition: the desiccated, red-spotted head of a large, hard-shelled weevil called Brachycerus apterus in Latin, or kafwabubela in the language of Tabwa people culturally related to the Songye and Eastern Luba10 (figs. 6–7). Although the device is sufficiently small and so inconspicuous that it may not be noticed, it contributes mightily to the kifwebe’s impact. The kafwabubela, too, holds a veritable storm of potencies derived from herbal and other natural substances, as well as vizimba activating agents drawn from human experience. Tabwa understand such a bundle to be a “little world” of their own confection, meant to work to its owner’s advantage in ways things “ought” to be but so rarely are without supernatural intervention. Yet the little world’s ingredients are by no means iconic—that is, even if one scrutinizes them, the crumbs, shavings, and merest hints of contents defy identification. In a way, what is included is far less significant than what might be. This is the nature of secrecy, of course (see Nooter 1992), and the bundle’s awesome powers, contributing to those of the kifwebe as performed, were/are greater than any of its parts or, indeed, of their sum. Last words: bifwebe possess and project an “affecting presence” (Armstrong 1971), and they “lead vigorous, clamorous lives” as they “hypnotize … and cry out, answering prayers and making demands” (Cotter 1997). Such are their attractions that it is easy to imagine the Davys’ fellowship with them. Years ago, the French philosopher and “subversive humanist” Gaston Bachelard urged his readers to “live close to familiar, everyday things” so as to “live slowly, thanks to their
PREFACE
11
Pl. 65 Male mask, kilume Eastern Songye Wood, vegetable fiber, natural pigments 48 cm Masterfully carved, this beautiful mask has elongated cheeks on a conical volume that narrows as it descends to the rounded chin. It harmoniously combines its characteristic traits: a small, projecting crest, black protruding eyes, patterns in white and reddish-brown angular lines on a black background. The chin is painted with a white triangle.14 The striations are not incised but defined by their colors, as on masks of plates 64 (type 1) and 70 (type 2). This mask was also collected by Karel Plasmans in situ.
Type 2 Type 2 masks are homogeneous and balanced in the form of an escutcheon. The semi-spherical head that stretches as far as the eyes is continued by a curved and slightly concave plane that reaches down as far as a straight and horizontal chin. A medium-to-low sagittal crest runs from the top of the head down to a triangular nose. The form of the projecting mouth varies from an open square, to a butterfly shape, to a four-pointed star. The striations customarily seen in Kalebwe masks are replaced by large bands of color in eastern masks. Type 2 masks here are represented by plates 65 to 75. The predominant characteristic is the smooth, medium-to-low polychrome crest, which—and this is rare—is not colored solid red (see type 1), but sometimes white or black. The polychrome striations vary in direction: undulating (pl. 68), angular (pl. 69), oblique (pls. 72, 73), and horizontal (pl. 70). The tip of the nose is painted white in rare examples (pls. 70, 73). And the space between the mouth and chin is often painted black (pls. 70, 71, 73).
SONGYE BIFWEBE MASKS
139
Pl. 65 Male mask, kilume Eastern Songye Wood, vegetable fiber, natural pigments 48 cm Masterfully carved, this beautiful mask has elongated cheeks on a conical volume that narrows as it descends to the rounded chin. It harmoniously combines its characteristic traits: a small, projecting crest, black protruding eyes, patterns in white and reddish-brown angular lines on a black background. The chin is painted with a white triangle.14 The striations are not incised but defined by their colors, as on masks of plates 64 (type 1) and 70 (type 2). This mask was also collected by Karel Plasmans in situ.
Type 2 Type 2 masks are homogeneous and balanced in the form of an escutcheon. The semi-spherical head that stretches as far as the eyes is continued by a curved and slightly concave plane that reaches down as far as a straight and horizontal chin. A medium-to-low sagittal crest runs from the top of the head down to a triangular nose. The form of the projecting mouth varies from an open square, to a butterfly shape, to a four-pointed star. The striations customarily seen in Kalebwe masks are replaced by large bands of color in eastern masks. Type 2 masks here are represented by plates 65 to 75. The predominant characteristic is the smooth, medium-to-low polychrome crest, which—and this is rare—is not colored solid red (see type 1), but sometimes white or black. The polychrome striations vary in direction: undulating (pl. 68), angular (pl. 69), oblique (pls. 72, 73), and horizontal (pl. 70). The tip of the nose is painted white in rare examples (pls. 70, 73). And the space between the mouth and chin is often painted black (pls. 70, 71, 73).
SONGYE BIFWEBE MASKS
139
Pl. 156 Zoomorphic mask, antelope Manono/Ankoro region Luba Wood, remnants of organic charges on crest edge and bottom of horns, vegetable fiber, burlap, natural pigments H. 70 cm
The mask has the same bell-shaped structure as plate 157. The horns are long, incised, and curved. Beneath the eyes, a smooth rectangle contains raised oblique triangles. On either side of the square projecting mouth lies a dark brown square. White is seen on the tips of the horns, the brow, and the cheeks, which are adorned with different striations. Plant fibers remain from the dancer’s costume.
Pl. 157 Zoomorphic mask, antelope Manono/Ankoro region Luba Wood, remnants of organic charges on crest edge and outside corner of eyes, natural and artificial pigments H. 51 cm This antelope mask has a very apparent forehead-nasal crest and two straight but obliquely directed horns. The planes of the cheeks flare and curve
inwards from the level of the dark eye cavities. A black line continues from the narrow eyes to the temples. The importance of the gaze is underscored by two blue lines followed by two white lines. Two oblique dark lines on the cheeks mark the juncture between zones of dissimilar striations. Beneath the mouth there is a black triangle. The bell shape of the mask is specific to the Ankoro region (Davy).
BIFWEBE: FROM THE SONGYE TO THE EASTERN LUBA AND ZELA
255
Pl. 156 Zoomorphic mask, antelope Manono/Ankoro region Luba Wood, remnants of organic charges on crest edge and bottom of horns, vegetable fiber, burlap, natural pigments H. 70 cm
The mask has the same bell-shaped structure as plate 157. The horns are long, incised, and curved. Beneath the eyes, a smooth rectangle contains raised oblique triangles. On either side of the square projecting mouth lies a dark brown square. White is seen on the tips of the horns, the brow, and the cheeks, which are adorned with different striations. Plant fibers remain from the dancer’s costume.
Pl. 157 Zoomorphic mask, antelope Manono/Ankoro region Luba Wood, remnants of organic charges on crest edge and outside corner of eyes, natural and artificial pigments H. 51 cm This antelope mask has a very apparent forehead-nasal crest and two straight but obliquely directed horns. The planes of the cheeks flare and curve
inwards from the level of the dark eye cavities. A black line continues from the narrow eyes to the temples. The importance of the gaze is underscored by two blue lines followed by two white lines. Two oblique dark lines on the cheeks mark the juncture between zones of dissimilar striations. Beneath the mouth there is a black triangle. The bell shape of the mask is specific to the Ankoro region (Davy).
BIFWEBE: FROM THE SONGYE TO THE EASTERN LUBA AND ZELA
255
FRANÇOIS NEYT
K I F W E BE
K I FWE B E
The kifwebe mask has an “otherworldly beingness,” created by its unique mix of human, animal, and supernatural spirit that expresses the spiritual essence of the Songye and Luba people of the southeastern area of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Combining the pulsating effect of a linear system of groove patterns with a powerful expression of varied emotions, their penetrating stare commands an unyielding presence. But they are so much more than what they look like—they are what they did. Recently, these masks have received increasing attention from art historians and anthropologists. This book heralds a new exploration of the kifwebe masking tradition, based on an extensive study of the outstanding Woods Davy collection in Los Angeles, California.
FRANÇOIS NEYT
A Century of Songye and Luba Masks
A Century of Songye and Luba Masks