IDNO

P.74257.GIJ

Description

Rumuji Owu Play with the character of Akaleme. The masquerader is dancing in the centre of the arena. The mask consists of a long horizontal carving with a long projection in the front, probably a fish or water spirit. On top of the mask are other carved objects emenating from within (not clear in the photograph); there are two handkerchiefs, one at the front and one at the end of the mask. The masquerader is draped in printed cotton cloth, white trousers, and anklets which make sounds as the masquerader dances. In the background are spectators.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]; Ikwerri

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.72183.GIJ to P.74286.GIJ were kept in box 15, now numbered C296/.

Context: Jones observed and described the Ogubkere play he saw in 1936. He writes, First came “Obiri Jack” , an elaborately caparisoned figure with palm leaf streamers around its neck, and with a model of a woolly dog made of feathers and ram’s mane standing on a platform on its head. It wandered around the ring, danced a bit to the band, and eventually retired, to be followed by Aminikoro, a figure similarly dressed but carrying an enormous head-dress representing a conventionalised crocodile-like fish. The under part of the head-dress was hung with short woolen tassels of different colours. Two even more conventionalized fishes followed Aminikoro. Their names, Iwolo and Egidi, were painted on their dorsal fins. They paced round, danced to the band for a while, and retired to the lodge again. All these were Christian masks and borrowed, as the illustration from an Abua Ogbukere play will show, directly from the Abuan plays. In the Abuan plays these “masks” of crocodile-like fishes and of even more conventionalized hippopotami are “juju” masks and the only ones in the play. Some Abuan plays have now followed Ihuaba’s example and introduced non-juju mask from outside, bought mainly from the Ibibio.” (Jones, 1939)

Context: Jones writes about the Rumuji Owu play and its characters. He notes that the Ekpeya and Southern Ikwerri had few face masks, the Egbema and Oba had many but do not seem to have any hippopotamus characters and only very rarely those representing predatory fish. Instead they had their own special variant of the white-faced female mask and a considerable range of heads and masks (some of them stylised and some almost abstract, for example a white circular disc, on which a curvilinear representation of a stylised human face had been carved in low relief and outlined in black. Different communities vied with each other introducing new characters, masks, and heads into their masquerades. In the Ekpeya and Southern Ikwerri tribe there were realistically carved representations of animals like porcupines and tortoises and more recently a dog, whose name in the two masquerades I saw was Jack. In one of them, Jack was a smooth black representation of the local pariah breed, in the other he was covered with long woolly hair and looked more like a Old English sheepdog. (1984, p. 158).

Context: “The Ekpeya (sometimes called the Ekpaffia), also had this Owu masquerade with the same range of characters, face masks and figures carved in the same style , but they had in addition adopted the Ogbukele secret society of the Abua people. With it had come the society meeting house, drum, Ogbukele masquerade and very different characters and masks representing water animal and predatory fish spirits with highly conventionalised head masks and figures. These were the first and only true Owu spirits produced by these masquerades, but they had to share the Ekpeya masquerade with birds and land animals (dogs, pangolins, tortoises and so on, represented by figures in the naturalistic style) and with two characters wearing conventionalised male heads who were said to be the first and second Heads of Obbukele.”(Jones, 1988, pp. 56-58.)

Bibliographical Reference:
Jones, G.I. 1939. “Obgukere Ihuaba” Nigerian Field, Vol. VIII, No.2, pp. 81-82.
Jones, G.I., 1984. The Art of Eastern Nigeria (Cambridge University Press)
Jones, G.I. 1989. Ibo Art. Shire.

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Alicia Fentiman 19/12/2007]