Koba mask

The masks Bobo found in the region of Sanin the southern part of the Republic of Mali and in the regions of Bobo Diulasso, Diebugú, and Dedugú de Burkina faso.

The Bobo are grouped in three fratries:

- The Bobo FingYou niggers.

- The Bobo GbéWhite.

- The Bobo UléReds.

They have occupied their country since the century XI and have known the great migrations Mossi century XII. It is a village of farmers, and, until the last decades, with little tendency to migrate to the big urban centers. Of these three groups only Bobo Fing work the wood. They sculpt it in the surroundings of Bobo Diulasso. They carve masks with human face and animal masks. They use softwoods and it is the blacksmiths who ensure this function. All these masks represent the spirit of “Do“ who protects the village from witches, spelldoers and soul eaters.

Once carved and sacralized, the masks intervene in funerals and mourning uprisings and also in the annual ceremonies held in the fields. All of them dance at the same time. These ceremonies take place during the month of June because they coincide with the agricultural works.

The masks are polychrome, they are covered with geometric drawings in which the colors yellow, red and black stand out. There are anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations. There are many animals represented, such as the rooster, the hawk, the buffalo or the antelopes as well as various young characters and girls.

Some of these masks have a round face and a mouth that has a very pronounced relief, with prominent lips, quadrangulars that allow the teeth to be glimpsed. They are topped with a long, trimmed wooden trail, decorated with black and white paintings, like a checkerboard. The masks wear a bright red robe of fibers that cover their wearers from head to toe. Its carriers, for dancing, are armed with two short sticks and a stick with leaves or a whip.

If during the ceremony the mask is broken it must be buried exactly as if it were a human being. The culprit of the break will be treated as a murderer and must make in the sacred forest the offering of a chicken, a goat, a dog and several containers with millet beer.

There are a wide variety of masks in the foolish country, the most important being those that come from divine revelation. For Bobo the mask is confused with the history of the clan or the lineage to which it belongs and is its sign of identity, as Guy Le Moal tells us, so that, despite the similarities, each mask is unique.

The Bobo They never represent any living or dead being, nor legendary spirit or hero in their masks, their masks respond to a figurative spirit and it is precisely this kind of ambiguity in representation that allows us to perpetuate the memory of the ancestors, whatever they may be. As for their zoomorf masks represent the legendary animal protector of the ancestor that gives origin to the lineage, whose meat is forbidden to consume.

The masks appear, Guy le Moal tells us, in the time that separates two crops, that is, between the time when the products of the earth have been collected, stored and consumed and the time when the first products of the following campaign appear.

The first mask of the Bobo It's a leaf mask, Dwogiven by Wuro, God supreme, to the first man, KwereDwo is the son of Wuro represented by the masks.

The masks are manifested in agrarian cults, in the initiation of young people, in the feast of purification of the peoples, the Birewa daga and in funeral ceremonies.

This mask represents the hippotrago or horse antelope, called koba by the natives. This animal, as well as the DogonHe taught man how to till the earth. Old patina.