IDNO

P.71492.GIJ

Description

Boys’ initiation dance in the Nri Akwa area. The male initiates are dancing around a pole held by an elder, and they are wearing layers of short pieces of cloth around their waist and around the knees are bands made of seeds? or metal? which will sound as they dance. The heads are covered with cloth kerchiefs and they are holding feathers. In the background are spectators.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; South Eastern Nigeria; Onitsha province; Nri Awka

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]; Nri Akwa

Named Person

Photographer

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Collector / Expedition

Date

circa 1930 - 1939

Collection Name

Jones collection

Source

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.71490.GIJ to P.71496.GIJ were wrapped in paper, now numbered C302/14/ and were presumed to have come from box 5, now numbered C302/.

Context: For a detailed discussion of initiation rites see Jones, 1962. Cole and Aniakor also discuss the importance of initiation rites. “Adolescent initiation inot th serious business of manhood in Igboland is normally marked by entry into a masked organization. Several regional variations exist (Cole and Anaikor, 1984, p.112).

Context: Green in her ethnographic study of the Igbo discusses the complexity of initiation rites. She writes, “The question of initiation rites is not an easy one to deal with. Those of the boys have gone underground to a considerable extent from fear of European disapproval and tend now to be held in connection with the initiation of a dibea. None were held in Umueke while I was living there, though when a dibea was initiated in the neighbouring village-group of Umunuma, we saw boys in initiation dress going to market with him in his public inception as a diviner and they had probably been passing through a period of initiation at the same time as he did his own. I obtained a number of descriptions of the normal boys’ initiation rites, which used to be held every few years and through which most of the boys in the village except the quite young ones had passed. The boys of part of the next door Agbaja village also participated. The chief feature of the rites was described as being the acquiring of aggressive medicine or magic rather than the receiving of instruction. This medicine could only be used against people who had not themselves acquired it, against strangers that is to say, and more particularly against women because the latter never acquired it. The medicine was put into the boys’ eyes and into cuts in the skin over a period of eight days. In so far as they were not supposed to cry it may be said that hardihood was inculcated. “ She continues to say that the initiation rites were important for group solidarity and a certain code of morality. (Green, 1947, pp.80-81.)

Bibliographical Reference: Jones, G.I. 1962, “Ibo Age Organization, with Special Reference to the Cross River and North-eastern Ibo.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 92, No. 2, pp.191-211.
Cole, H. & C. Aniakor, 1984. Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos (Museum of Cultural History, University of California)
Green, M.M. 1964 (second edition) Igbo Village Affairs (Frank Cass and Co.).

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Alicia Fentiman 19/11/2007]