Ty Wara mask, Bougouni style

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 snake, one of the five primordial animals, which taught men to cultivate the land and the secrets of agriculture. 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 the “nyama” from them,

negative effluxes, detect any danger or discover evil geniuses able to pluck the soul from 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 wicker basket on the head or also by means of vegetable fibers and the bodies are completely concealed under a raffia and leafy fibers dress that symbolizes the rain.

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.