Ci Wara

Tyi wara, ty o ti wara, chy, ci o cy wara are multiple names used to name the best known scimer mask of the Bambara.

It is the mythical antelope, born of the union of the old mother Mousso Koroni and the serpent, one of the five primordial animals, who taught men to cultivate the land. Its stylized representation of the hippotrago or horse antelope, is the emblem of the “Fla-n-kuru”, brotherhood of the Tyi Wara society, belonging to the age classes that brings together boys and girls in a single class of septenal age. These youth associations have as their social purpose to work in the dispossession or to help the most disadvantaged in the fields, such as sowing and harvesting. These aids are part of the initiation process. On the occasion of these works, preceded by a sacrificer carrying a fetish, a pair of dancers wearing the male and female Tyi Wara masks, animals protecting the crops, accompanied by a jester mask. The masks ran through the fields, imitating the movements of the hypothragus, in order to expel from them the “nyama”, negative effluvios, detect any danger or discover the evil geniuses able to pluck the soul from the cultivated plants or the vital strength of their grains.

Mythology Bambara The hypothragus, sent by Faro, gave the man the first grain and then taught him how to work the earth. They always appear in pairs, male and female, always carrying the body covered by vegetable fibers and the mask fixed in a kind of hat on the head or also by means of vegetable fibers.

The female antelope carries on its back a small antelope, 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.

Bougouni's style is characterized by several overlapping animals, usually a pangolin and antelopes. The cimera ends up with a representation of the hypothrag or waterbook hornament. In this case instead of a pangolin it is a small antelope, apod, difficult to identify. The great horns of the hypothragus start from a head of anthropomorphic traits. And from his neck there are also two small horns, curved at the bottom, equally difficult to identify.