In Masquerades in African Society, Walter E. A. van Beek and Harrie M. Leyten present a study of masquerade traditions across Africa, drawing on decades of ethnographic research. They interrogate masquerades not merely as performative spectacles but also bring to the fore specific ecological, historical, and sociological factors that form the conditions necessary for masquerades to exist and how these factors interact with gender, power, and identity formation in certain African cultures (5). At the core of the book is the authors’ Mask Distribution Theory. They argue that masquerade traditions are not randomly distributed across Africa but are concentrated within what they term the “Mask Crescent,” spanning West Africa, West-Central Africa, and parts of Central-East Africa. According to the authors, societies that depend on cattle, such as the Maasai of East Africa, tend not to develop masking traditions because cattle economies require different social structures. Although this argument is largely convincing, it invites critical scrutiny, particularly regarding the authors’ assertion that masks rarely appear in sacrifices, agricultural rites, and are never used in marriage or birth rights (45). Given the prevalence of ritualized performance in African agrarian societies, this claim risks overgeneralization in this chapter because the authors counter their own assertion in the eighth chapter when they emphasize the ciwara as an agricultural mask.
The second chapter offers one of the book’s most conceptually rich contributions about masks. The authors reject simplistic definitions of masks as just “face coverings” and instead describe them as sui generis entities, or what they call “be-things.” Masks, in this formulation, are total assemblage: costume, headpiece, paraphernalia, music, dance, legitimacy, and specialized knowledge (75) that are believed to originate from realms beyond human settlements. As such, they emerge from the bush, the wilderness, or the domain of spirits and ancestors and the masked performer thus becomes what van Beek and Leyten describe as a delegate: an intermediary who temporarily bridges the spirit world and the human community. This framing becomes particularly significant in Chapter Three, which examines masking, masculinity, and initiation. Drawing on examples such as the Dan of Liberia, the Fali of North Cameroon, and the Ndembu of Zambia, the authors show how initiates are symbolically “abducted” into the bush and confronted by terrifying masked figures like the makishi. These rites emphasize pain, silence, and secrecy as markers of masculinity. Initiates are considered socially dead or “eaten” by the mask until they are reborn through language, food, and discipline. Learning to speak in proverbs, to remain silent when necessary, and to eat again symbolizes their reintegration into society as men.
Van Beek and Leyten further explore the theme of secrecy in Chapter Four, which navigates the relationship between power, language, and gender. Masquerades are often controlled by male-dominated secret societies such as the poro in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire. Knowledge is carefully guarded through coded speech, and vocal manipulation. Among the Bamana of Mali, for instance, the authors mention “question speak” as a linguistic rhetoric that disguises meaning through tone and verbal indirection. Van Beek and Leyten also highlight the difficulties of translating such ideas into European languages, noting how the Jola informants in Senegal use a single term (nyau-nyau) to mean “secret,” “sacred,” and “forbidden” (135). Similarly, music as a crucial feature of masquerades also becomes a language of concealment, as seen in the jaraw masquerade of Mali, where drums mimic animal sounds to heighten fear and mystique.
The role of women in masking societies offers a crucial gendered counterpoint to earlier discussions of masculinity. Although women are largely excluded from performing masquerades, the authors argue that women possess a different but equally potent form of power rooted in the home. While men’s power resides in masks and the bush, women’s power is embodied, domestic, and foundational to social reproduction; a claim that subtly emphasizes the female body itself as a mask and complicates simplistic readings of masquerade as purely “costumes” or patriarchal. In contemporary politics, the authors further demonstrate how masks function as instruments of governance, ancestral authority, and moral regulation in the seventh chapter. The Yoruba Egungun masquerades of Nigeria exemplify how ritual performance reinforces political hierarchy and communal discipline. This chapter also gestures toward what the authors term the “Akan gap,” pointing to variations in how the Akan of Ghana fall within the Mask Cresent, are not cattle-rearing communities, but do not have masking traditions.
The subsequent chapters situate masquerades within broader social and political transformations. Masks such as the ciwara of Mali regulate agricultural labor and productivity, while others are mobilized to combat witchcraft and restore moral balance. In contemporary contexts, masquerades increasingly negotiate the pressures of religion, nationalism, and globalization. According to the authors, in Senegal, where national unity is emphasized over ethnic distinction, masquerades are reframed as heritage symbols rather than ethnic markers. The authors also examine tensions between state control and community ritual power, as well as the reinvention of masquerades in the African diaspora, particularly in Cuba. These transnational adaptations demonstrate the enduring force of masquerades as repositories of memory and identity in the New World even after the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Overall, Masquerades in African Societies: Gender, Power, and Identity is an intellectually demanding work that succeeds in presenting masquerade as a dynamic institution at the intersection of gender, power, and identity. While some assertions invite debate, the book remains a significant contribution to African studies, performance studies, anthropology, and ethnography.
