Lwalwa

The Lwalwathe people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, of just over twenty thousand people, are settled in the southwest of the province of western Kasaï, in an agricultural area well adapted for crops. There are also Lwalwas in Angola. They speak the Iwalwa or Iwalu. His artistic production is quite reduced, his rectangular elongated eye masks are known and of reduced height, his mouth also rectangular is formed by two wooden ledges that form the lips. The extended and enlarged nose as you approach the mouth part of the upper forehead area. The power of the village chiefs is controlled by the powerful secret society Ngongo who besides taking care of the initiation of the youth organizes the hunting rituals and their dance the Bangongo, in which the masks participate to obtain a favorable hunt. If the hunters come back empty-handed, the masks take care of their dances to appease the spirits to be favorable to them. Ngongo society is also responsible for organizing the cult of ancestors. Like all animists, they believe in a supreme being, but their cults are primarily oriented to the deities of nature, hunting geniuses and ancestors. Their masks are essentially hunting masks and their sculptors belong to a privileged caste.