Ty Wara mask, Bougouni style

Tyi wara, ty or ti wara, chy, ci or cy wara: many names are used for the best-known crest mask of the Bambara.

It is the mythical antelope, born of the union of the old mother Mousso Koroni and the snake, one of the five primordial animals, which taught people to cultivate the land and revealed the secrets of agriculture. Its stylised representation of the hippotragus, or horse antelope, is the emblem of the ‘Fla-n-kuru’, a brotherhood of the Tyi Wara society belonging to the age-grade system, which brings boys and girls together in a single seven-year age group. These youth associations have the social purpose of clearing land or helping the most disadvantaged with fieldwork, such as sowing and harvesting. This assistance forms part of the initiation process. On these occasions, a pair of dancers wearing male and female Tyi Wara masks, protective animals of the crops, would appear, preceded by a sacrificer carrying a fetish and accompanied by a jester mask. The masks went through the fields, imitating the movements of the hippotragus, to drive out the ‘nyama’,

negative emanations, detect any danger or discover malevolent spirits capable of tearing the soul from cultivated plants or the life force from their seeds.

Bambara mythology recounts that the Hippotragus antelope, sent by Faro, gave humans their first grain and then taught them to work the land. The masks always appear in pairs, male and female. The wearers’ bodies are always covered with plant fibres, and the mask is fixed in a kind of wicker basket on the head, or secured with plant fibres. Their bodies are entirely concealed beneath clothing of raffia fibres and leaf litter, symbolising rain.

The female antelope carries a small antelope on her back as a symbol of motherhood and fertility.

The male couple symbolizes the union, strength and wisdom the farmer needs to fertilize and cultivate the land that will give him and his family food. It also evokes for the Bambara the analogy between the sexual act and the work of the earth, the analogy between the fertility of the woman and the work of the fields.

These headdresses combine superimposed forms of different animals, most frequently the antelope, aardvark and pangolin, usually with the ears and horns of a Hippotragus antelope on the head. They may also represent a snake, turtle, crocodile or chameleon.