© A. Pappone
Every two years, Dedougou, a small town west of Ouagadougou, hosts FESTIMA, one of the most interesting and representative cultural events in West Africa, focusing on the preservation of animist traditions, linked to the complex spiritual universe of African masks.
To consider the mask simply as an object of craftsmanship is extremely reductive for traditional African societies. The mask is a symbolic and spiritual element of great importance, whose ultimate purpose is the protection and well-being of communities. The mask/spirit is the essential guarantor of public order, the repository of the secrets of the world beyond, before which it acts as a mediator in the dialogue between the living and the spirits of the ancestors, in an initiatory and propitiatory ritual, but also playful and therapeutic, linked to the complex cosmogony of animist cults and tribal “secret societies“.
The Festival International des Masques et des Arts, FESTIMA, began in 1996 on the initiative of ASMA, the association for the preservation of African masks, with the aim of reinforcing and promoting the ancestral customs and cultural heritage associated with them, which are today endangered by the profound changes of new modern societies and by progress that tends increasingly to relegate tradition to the sphere of folklore or superstition, forgetting its fundamental identity role in the multicoloured mosaic of African peoples. Each region, each village, each sedentary farming community, has its own universe of masks, each with a precise role. The variety is infinite, as are the dances, rites and ceremonies that accompany the presentation of each mask, whose secrets and tasks, mainly linked to the cyclical nature of the harvest seasons, are guarded only by the world of male initiates (with the exception of Sierra Leone, the only country to have a female mask).
Participating in the FESTIMA performances offers the opportunity to see the highest concentration and variety of masks (albeit decontextualised from their original role) from all the regions of Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries gathered in a single event. The beautiful and precious embroidered fabrics of the egugun, who embody the spirits of the “returnees” from the Americas, in Benin’s Voodoo culture, alternate in whirling dances with the acrobatic evolutions of the “panther men“, initiatory masks of the Poro ritual, dear to the Senoufo people of the Ivory Coast. The characteristic and spectacular wooden masks of the Dogon, accompanied by the rich polychromy of the costumes, in a rhythmic sequence of dances, contrast with the great variety of anthropomorphic and animal forms of the Bwa masks, from the Burkinabé region of Boni. The vegetal costumes parade alongside the splendid masks in the shape of the sun, butterfly and calao bird, typical of the Bobo tradition. The evocative ‘white masks‘, similar to many ghosts and dear to the Dioula culture, challenge the voodoo ‘guardians of the night’ of the zangbeto.
And many, many more… a vast array for a cultural event that is also a competition between groups of initiates, representing each region and each province, who compete in heart-pounding performances, accompanied by groups of griots, the real directors of each performance, who lead and incite with the incessant rhythm of their traditional musical instruments. A full immersion in Africa’s most authentic cultural heritage, for an event not to be missed!
