 |
|
Mende, the primary ethnic population in Sierra Leone, is a patrilineal society with polygamous unions, with the senior wife in a position of control since women do much of the farmwork and it is organized by the senior wife. The Mende religion is characterized by belief in one god, Nguwo-the creator of the world, he called people into existence as well as the earth. He is the ruler of the world which menas that things happen with his permission. People, and children, will call on him directly through prayer. Mende life has something similar to a constitution of ethics which seems to consist of the supreme god and lower gods, but is thought of and responded to as a system of beliefs, customs and laws. This may help to explain the way in which Sowo, a goddess, more than symbolizes truth and wisdom. She IS truth and wisdom.
Central to Mende life-for men and for women--is the hale: religious-legal institutions with initiation rituals. They resemble secret societies, but everyone belongs to one and so they are also something like religious communities. Everyone must, in fact, belong to one because they are the means through which Mende knowledge of the world is passed on. The person who is uninitiated will not understand Mende life.
Sande Society: the women's hale
-this is known to be one of very few settings in West Africa in which women
customarily wear masks. (Interestingly, the other society where women's
masking is known has a very similar name: Mande.)
 |
Sande governs women's lives and protects them; every woman will enter Sande. It is their religion and moral philosophy, and since the Mende believe that the source of productivity and wealth is female, Sande is important in the lives of men as well as of women. Through its educational, moral, political and social values, Sande is more than a hale, but it is the female hale in its essence and the individual woman in Mende society locates herself in the Sande organization. Perhaps the meaning of Sande in terms of the broader structure and the detailed role it plays in women's lives is something that goes beyond the meaning of a hale: Sande designates a solidarity of women, women together for any time and reason.
When did Sande come into existence?
At the begining of the Mende world through a dream by Sande Jo, a woman
who was told to organize the women's hale. So Sande existed at the beginning,
but people existed first and people made Sande to serve the people. Sande
was made by a woman. The dream which carried the message came from the
gods so Sande has spiritual approval.
 |
 |
What is beauty? And
how do we judge beauty when facing something that we've never seen before
and which has so little correlation with our other experiences?
 |
| In 1966 an art critic and historian
(Meyer Schapiro) said that the traditionally accepted standards of beauty
needed to be reconsidered. These were: perfection, coherence, and the unity
of form and content. He went on to ask how we can judge perfection if we
admit that we never see the whole object, the work of art in its entirety,
and we never see it the same way twice. He was asking this question with
regard to artworks which might be seen in a museum but a question with
a great deal more relevance if we are talking about a mask seen only during
a performance once a year. Then he asked, how do we reconcile the idea
of perfection with the fact that the greatest artists in the history of
the world created works of art that are less than perfect but profoundly
moving? We inevitably redefine perfection, we change the meaning, to include
their mistakes. But this does have the effect of making the idea of perfection
meaningless.
Coherence is no easier to define or recognize than perfection, especially when the world itself lacks coherence. But unity of form and content may be the most problematic feature, especially if we do not understand either half of the equation (the meaning of unity or the meaning of the content). Nonetheless, unity of form and content
may be the most central to the understanding of aesthetics, especially
when we do not define aesthetics as beauty. And increasingly we can't--the
content of the work of art may be diametrically opposed to beauty. The
content of the Vietnam Memorial is not the beauty of war or death. If we
only found the memorial to be beautiful, it would not succeed in the territory
it has staked out for itself, the territory of healing. If we speak of
the aesthetic of healing, or Hackett's notion of the aesthetic as an antidote,
we are from the very outset saying that aesthetics has some other meaning
than that of beauty.
|
The mask of Sowo, an aesthetic of female
spirituality and knowledge, is measured and defined in terms of beauty,
and beauty in this case is defined in a manner which is quite close to
the above definition: perfection, coherence, and the unity of form and
content. But the key, however,
is knowing what these terms mean to the people who define them, to the
Sande Society and Mende culture.
 |
|
 |
 |
The people in the community see Sowo
as a fully costumed person wearng a black wooden helmet mask combined with
a black raffia and cloth costume.
 |
Sowo is more than a beautiful water goddess; Sowo is truth and the ideal, and as truth and the ideal, Sowo exists on a metaphysical plane. The mask makes her material so that humans can learn from her.
The mask is made of wood and it completely covers the wearer's head and rests on her shoulders, looking very heavy, although it is not. It is polished and finished in solid black and is divided into three parts: a ringed neck, the face, and the hair.
The face is formed as two parts with
the top half the forehead and perhaps the eyebrows but otherwise empty.
It is shaped like a diamond. The coiffure is the largest part of the mask
and the most detailed.
 |
 |
To be accepted by the Sande society, the mask must be beautiful and awe-inspiring; to be thought these things it must be complete and correct in all its parts, it must be comfortable to wear, it must be shiny black, smooth, balanced and symmetrical; the features must all be clearly visible; it must appear to be fresh and new; the features must be delicate and dainty and even subtle. These would appear to be the criteria for coherence and perfection. The form which the features must take reflects the meanings attributed to them: unity of content and form.
[There are two masks for Sande: the second mask is Gonde. If Sowo represents all that is transcendent about women, then Gonde represents all that is undesired, the anti-aesthetic side of womanhood; the Gonde mask is coarse and broken or grotesque, and comic and antic; yet they are both spirit masks and so they are equal and both are necessary to represent the full Sande/Mende world. We might think of this as another example of the unity of form and content: the aesthetic of beauty embodied in one mask; the aesthetic of the grotesque in another, but taken together, the whole of womanhood.]
What do the various parts of the mask mean?
The neck: we see a human form but its meaning is divinity. The neck rings are a sign of beauty, wealth and status in the adult. Sowei, the head of Sande society, and the sowo mask, share the desired traits of people in the Mende world. The Sowei woman is the person in society who is thought to be responsible for all fertility and the protector of all women and children. The neck of her mask communicates the generosity and power of this woman. But it communicates more than this. The word used to describe neck rings on a woman is a word which means "cut-neck." This is important because it suggests the skill and delicate touch necessary to make a ringed cut without harming the person. In a sense, it also suggests a parallel between the creation of the human being and the carved mask; the rings on the neck of woman and mask then become a sign of God's creative hand. The neck rings on the mask also signify the belief that the mask was made underwater. The rings reflect more than cuts in the neck; they reflect the waves formed on the surface of the water as the goddess Sowo rises up. The neck rings on the mask, if we follow this thinking, function in much the same way as the halo in a Christian icon painting of a saint. They signify divinity and they are almost an icon by themselves.
The mouth is very discreet to signify
the discretion of the sowo and the Sowei. The ears and eyes are glorified
and enhanced-the eyes by their length and by slits, the ears by relief
carving.
Vision is the most important sense, and the eyes are the most beautiful part of the face. Eyes see and tell the truth; this is a meaning of the eyes which we have encountered before. The slitted eye conceals the identify of the dancer by serving as a screen to keep others from seeing sowo directly. The eye is another icon: the eye of the mask is not a clear human eye but the veiled eye of a spirit. But this veiled eye is also seductive and calm and pure.
Mende believe that the sense of hearing is perfectly developed at birth and that sounds form a connected chain from the heartbeat of the mother to her voice which she uses to confide her secrets in the newborn baby. In its form, the ear is believed to remain unchanged and therefore, it signifies the integrity of human design. But the ear on the Sowo mask is a closed ear, an ear which cannot be tempted by bribery, an ear that is not moved by lies, pains or pleasure; an ear which signifies detachment and truth.
The hair-do (ngu-fele): the coiffeur is elaborately carved and adorned with ornaments. Together, the hair and its embellishments signify grandeur, beauty or power, and meaning related to the particular ornaments in the hair. The hair-do is the part of the mask that may make it seem most human, the part of the mask that responds to the individual desires of the dancer. But the classic Sowo mask is unadorned. In other words, there is a hierarchy of sowo masks: a classical mask of divine origin and which can be used only by the person at the highest level of Sande society (Sowei); and another type of sowo mask which is used by specialist dancers at an intermediary level. The difference between them can be seen in the coiffure-the classical masks have a classical hair style which is tied with a white cloth at top; the dancers' masks are made to the individual taste of the dancer and come in varied hairstyles with ornaments but no white cloth. These second level masks represent the presonality of a particular spirit, so the variation in hair styles as much reflects the spirit's personality as the dancer's, or maybe even more. The unadorned mask, however, is the archetype of the Sowo mask.
There is another hierarchy of masks: three levels of quality of the sowo mask. The lowest level is said to have been made by an ordinary human being, someone who is a farmer by profession and a parttime carver; his objects lack the fine detail of the better quality masks. The more delicate and subtle masks are believed to be made with the help of little people who live in forests-the carver does the general work but these "elves" do the detailed work; the most prized pieces, however, are made by water spirits. Heaven, as in some other African cultures, is believed to be underwater and that is where the best masks are made. The primary clue is not on the outside, though, but on the inside, a surface of perfect white with no marks, no blemishes of any sort.
It is clear, then, that all the elements of the mask can be associated with symbolic meaning. But the meaning of the mask is more than a sum of its parts. Without the costume, it does not have meaning, according to some members of the Mende community. Yet, according to the elders of the Sande society, the mask does have meaning apart from its costume and apart from being worn by a dancer. Unlike the costume, the mask has a name which is the same as the name given to the person who wears it. Costumes do not have names and costumes can be replaced. The costume is not seen unless it is worn with the head; the head may appear as part of rituals without the costume. And it is only the mask which is made by the spirits which live in the water.
To the Mende, the mind and the body are not one; they are separate entities linked by the neck. The head controls the body and controls life. The word for head is also used by Mende to signify such ideas as getting to the key point, to what we tend to call the "heart of the matter." The large space given to the forehead of the mask relates to the Mende belief that the forehead signifies importance, fame, and intelligence and wisdom. If the head is the most important part of the person, the sowo mask is the most important part of the masked personage. If the head signifies the person, the mask signifies the spirit. A divine head encasing a human head, the resonance between the human mind and the spirit, the transformation of the mind into the universal spirit: this appears to be the meaning of the sowo mask. Spirituality embodied by the female and signifying ideal wisdom and truth, or, in other words, a spiritual presentification of moral values and ideals in the body of Sowei as she dances Sowo. Or is it a presentification? Sowo, the classic mask, reflects the traits of Sowei just as Sowei reflects the characteristics of Sowo; in this sense, the mask is NOT a form of presentification but a form of representation and complementarity.
But Sylvia Boone says it much better.
These masks are "materializations of Mende aesthetic canons and moral ideals;
they are role models, shaping the character of the Mende, influencing their
feelings, thoughts, and actions. The overpowering presence of a Sowo obliterates
the mundane. The eye blinks in dazzled acknowledgement of what one should
and could be: intelligent, capable, authoritative, adaptable, courageous,
patient, honest, persevering, strong, and 'straight.'" (xx: prologue)
Source: Sylvia Ardyn Boone. Radiance
from the Waters. Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art. New Haven:
YUP, 1986.