Adamma: a contemporary Igbo maiden spirit.

A performer wearing a large mask of a woman's face looked out flirtatiously from beneath a set of swinging black plaits hung with beads and topped with a brilliant yellow chiffon head-tie arranged at a haphazard angle. The wooden mask was painted the color of cafe au lait, its glossy surface accented by painted features: eyes rimmed with heavy black eyeliner and a red-lipsticked mouth. The masker was a tall man--more than six feet in height--wearing a body suit of patterned metallic cloth in red, green, and gold. Deep yellow chiffon ruffles encircled his shoulders and neck and were complemented by a ruffled pink, yellow, and green miniskirt and white polyester gloves. The masker dipped his shoulders and snapped his fingers, then began to dance in a virtuoso women's style, with rapid footwork and controlled arm and hand gestures, before breaking off and resuming his previous sauntering dance. Finally he came to rest on a low platform and seated himself demurely with his legs drawn closely to one side, posing for the cameras as though for a fashion shoot (Fig. 1). This was Adamma, a contemporary Igbo maiden spirit performing in the 1993 Mmanwu Festival.

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Usually an annual event, the state-sponsored Mmanwu Festival, held in a stadium in Enugu, celebrates local masking traditions and heralds the reinvention of masking in contemporary Nigeria. In many ways Adamma is an innovation that has broken with the maiden-spirit tradition as much as it has partaken of it. Maiden spirits customarily appear in village festivals in performances that variously incorporate dance and narrative. (1) Those masquerades often incarnate female ancestors of their patrilineages, and their white faces indicate their ghostly quality as well as their beauty and purity. For the Igbo, whiteness is associated with coolness, control, and benevolence, and is often considered a female attribute (E. Obi, personal communication, 1994; Cole & Aniakor 1984:121). Maiden-spirit masks have sharply defined, often arched noses (Figs. 2, 3). Some exhibit a closed mouth, while many others have flat, narrow lips that draw back from clenched teeth. Faces are often patterned with black designs that recall indigo body painting known as uli. Most maiden spirits have complicated arched or mounded hairstyles adorned with coiled plaits and combs. Their black hair and curvilinear facial designs contrast with and complement the oblique white curves that define the planes of the face (Fig. 4). The masker's body suit is typically made of heavy black felt as the foundation for densely appliqued patterns cut from commercial cloth in vibrant colors such as green, yellow, pink, and orange (Fig. 5).

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Adamma, on the other hand, has a tan face mask with smooth, naturalistic features accented by painted eyeliner and lipstick rather than uli designs, and she wears a long plaited black wig hung with colorful plastic beads rather than a maiden spirit's crested hairstyle. Yet, although Adamma looks like a contemporary woman, her flashy patterned body suit evokes not only current international fashions but also the bright, multicolored applique costumes worn by maiden spirits, just as her light-toned face associates her with their femininity (Fig. 6).

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The venues in which Adamma performs are markedly secular in contrast to the occasions when traditional maiden spirits appear. Her masquerade play is not limited to the customary setting of the village square during the masking season in Akama, where she originated, but takes place at urban venues whenever possible. Furthermore, her masquerade troupe has incorporated theatrical practice and video technology into the traditional Igbo format of the play, and the solo performance of the lead character draws on elements of global media.

Tradition and Change in Igbo Masking

Igbo maskers have a spiritual essence that varies in expression from the comedic to the sacred. Some masquerades can be watched by the entire community, while others may only be seen by society members after women and children have been banished from the roads and fields (B. Egbeji, personal communication, 1994; E. Okara, personal communication, 1994; Henderson 1972:363). Colonialism and the loss of local council authority reduced the power of masking societies, which are not supposed to contravene Nigerian statutes. In rare instances citizens may bring police complaints against a society and see the case taken to customary court, which deals with conflicts between customary and modern laws. Political patronage, religious change, and intimidation have also limited the authority of this institution (R. Okonkwo, personal communication, 1994; R. Maduakor, personal communication, 1993; N. Agu, personal communication, 1994). Despite the many religious and political changes that have affected the Igbo, however, masking societies remain culturally important in almost every community, where they are esteemed for their dramatic plays, their authority to enact their laws during the masking season, and their ability to punish those who transgress them.

Many Igbo communities include plays in their masking performances. The dramas are often based on particular local traditions. Typical plots revolve around hunting, the dilemmas that family poses for an ambitious man, the ridiculous behaviors of wives and sons, and the virtuous nature of sisters and daughters (Cole & Aniakor 1984:147-53). Skilled dance interludes may be important structural elements (Cole & Aniakor 1984:204; Ottenberg 1975:93-106). Crowds gather in family compounds or in the village square to be entertained and to learn the moral lessons of these dramas (Cole & Aniakor 1984:124; Ottenberg 1975:13). (2)

Until recently, masquerade plays were staged for a short time during a town's festival season and were often performed only once after a few weeks of innovation and practice (Ottenberg 1975:87-88). After World War II, when men began to leave home to find work in the cities, the situation changed. It became difficult to schedule dates within the season so that expatriate town members could attend masking society initiations and performances (E. Okara, personal communication, 1994). In Enugu, Nsukka, and other large cities in the Igbo area, maskers appeared with supporters and musicians during festival periods introduced by the British: Christmas, New Year's, and Easter. (3)

Christianity became increasingly important in Igbo communities during the twentieth century, and evangelical Christianity was especially popular in the 1990s. By 1993, when we first saw Adamma and her troupe at the Mmanwu Festival, performance opportunities separate from the masked festivals of individual towns had long been available to secular maskers. Although drawn from a tradition of sacred masked drama, Adamma is unencumbered by any spiritual manifestations that might disturb a Christian audience, particularly in the urban environment of Enugu, where many people participate in Christianity to some degree. The prohibitions that govern most masquerades and that protect their spiritual qualities--by limiting contact with women or by appearing only on sacred patrilineage territory--are essentially absent from Adamma, so the masking troupe could entertain at public, nontraditional events, including Christian ones.

The Masquerade Play

A large sign on the Nsukka highway approximately fifteen miles north of Enugu declares to passersby that Akama Junction is "The Village of Adamma Masquerade" (Fig. 7). After attending the Mmanwu Festival we traveled to Akama and interviewed the man who, in the mid-1980s, had created Adamma and her attendant play and had seen her become one of the most popular masquerades in the area. (4) He was then working for the Nigerian postal service and performing Adamma on weekends. As in previous years, he incarnated her at the Mmanwu Festival, leading off the opening parade of masks that is meant to to entertain the urban populace and attract tourists. (5)

[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]

When we saw the masquerade at the 1993 festival, the characters included Adamma, her husband, a threatening leopard, a palm-wine tapper, and Adamma's young daughter. (According to the masquerade's creator, in extended versions of the play, Adamma is accompanied by two other young women dressed in a similar fashion.) The rest of the troupe was made up of four or more musicians and about ten young male dancers called abarakpa, who danced before the play and during breaks in the narrative. (6) In 1994 we again interviewed the Adamma troupe and its leader, this time in Enugu. When we prepared to leave Nigeria that year, we arranged with the Adamma masker to have his popular creation entertain guests at our farewell party. (7)

The Adamma play is typical of Igbo masked drama. In short, dance-oriented acts it presents an amusing yet moralizing story about the need for decorum, amiability, and virtue in women. Ada means "eldest daughter," while mma refers to both mmanwu (masked spirit) and oma (beautiful and good). (8) As a senior daughter, Adamma's virtue is especially important; after marriage and motherhood, she would be responsible for overseeing family funerals and honoring ancestors. Beauty and virtue are linked concepts among the Igbo, for a virtuous person is considered a beautiful one (A. Umeh, personal communication, 1994). Yet the narrative of the Adamma play indicates the problem posed by this simplistic equation. Adamma is good but also outrageously flirtatious; virtuous but at the same time a victim of her own vain folly.

During the 1994 interview, the lead masker gave us a detailed oral version of the play, which was supported by a second masker's simpler oral version. The latter appeared to follow the performance we saw just before our departure. In the oral accounts, Adamma is a beautiful and elegant daughter from a poor farm family. She rejects every suitor who asks for her hand, because she feels they are not handsome or good enough. (9) One day the spirits decide that something must be done about the young woman's selfish behavior. They choose a spirit to court her who, having only half a body, borrows arms, legs, and face from more beautiful spirits (Fig. 9). Driving a Mercedes laden with crates of Coca-Cola, this attractive composite being woos Adamma. She announces that she will marry him, thinking that here at last is a man worthy of her. (10)

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When the couple return to the husband's compound, things literally begin to fall apart. One by one the spirits demand the return of their body parts, and Adamma is left with next to nothing for a mate. She nevertheless works hard on their farm. One day a leopard kills what is left of her husband and attacks Adamma as well. Though she fights back, the leopard is just about to drag her away into the forest (Fig. 10) when a poor, ugly palm-wine tapper steps in and kills it (Figs. 11, 12). Adamma then realizes that beauty is not the only quality to look for in a husband. Soon the two are wed, and the palm-wine tapper turns out to be a good and honest man. The couple have a daughter, who is almost the mirror image of Adamma.

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In the play version that we witnessed, the emphasis was on dance displays; narrative scenes were abbreviated. There was no set for the performance. Instead, scene changes were suggested by the appearance of new characters, the exit of maskers, and the entrance of dancers. The masks and costumes of the actors were the primary scenic elements, and only the palm-wine tapper carried any props, which were the tools of his trade--a bark-climbing belt, a wine collection bottle, and a carved wooden shotgun. The play's form was generally based on conventions of Igbo masked drama. Dance sessions were interspersed with narrative enactments; much of the story was presented through gesture, while a rank of musicians not only played but supplied information to dancers and audience alike. The audience gathered in a large circle around the masking troupe, leaving plenty of room for the performance. Adamma's coquettish behavior, which was not mentioned in the oral descriptions, was a crucial aspect of her performance throughout the play and of the performance by her and her daughter at its end.

Adamma danced a male interpretation of an Igbo woman's dance, just as she had at the opening of the Mmanwu Festival. She performed throughout the play and was its most rousing element. Her fast footwork was accentuated by her bent knees, which kept her body close to the ground. Her hands, sometimes outspread and sometimes clenched, usually moved in symmetrical circular patterns near her hips or in controlled outward motions near her waist. At times, Adamma leapt up in the air with knees still bent and spread her arms wide.

Shortly after one of these dance displays, the spirit husband came out to dance in tandem with Adamma. Characterized as a very handsome man in the oral descriptions, he wore a red, white, and blue striped net body costume that also covered his face and was topped with feathers. The inhuman quality of the costume indicated the husband's spirit character and, possibly, the loss of his borrowed body parts later in the story. The palm-wine tapper, in contrast, was short and wore a dark, oversized human mask with a grinning mouth. Adamma's masker, like many Igbo maiden-spirit maskers, was tall (Cole & Aniakor 1984:121) and towered over him.

At the close of the play, a boy about eight or nine years old appeared as the daughter. Although she did not wear a head tie, the character was dressed in the same flamboyant style as Adamma. Her mask was fleshier, and as with Adamma, even the whites of her eyes were painted in order to emphasize her human appearance (Fig. 13). After dancing vigorously with her mother, the daughter danced by herself while the other maskers withdrew. The audience rewarded the young masker and the entire performance with expressions of pleasure and applause.

[FIGURE 13 OMITTED]

After the troupe exited the performance area, Adamma, snapping her fingers and swinging her plaits and hips, sauntered to the compound fence, raised a corner of her skirt (Fig. 14), and stared directly at the audience--behavior for which she was apparently well known (E. Okara, personal communication, 1994). Then she danced up to each of us in turn and took us into the arena to dance with her before wrapping her arm around us and raising her skirt again.

[FIGURE 14 OMITTED]

The lead masker added two new narrative elements to his oral account that are in tension with the masquerade play. First, Adamma writes home to her parents, asking them for advice on her marriage to the spirit, by now divested of his borrowed body parts. They reply that they are too poor to help her; in other words, they cannot afford to return the marriage payment for an irresponsible daughter. Letters fly back and forth as Adamma importunes her mother and father. In the second addition, she later refuses to wed the good palm-wine tapper, for he is, after all, small and ugly. At that point, the village council questions Adamma and decrees that she marry him. Only this greater intervention forces her to act properly. This version of the story would probably be difficult to act out without a complicated stage set and a longer performance period.

One woman watched the Adamma play with cynical detachment. She told us that as an older Christian she was skeptical of masking "secrets." During our stay we had noted that other women expressed similar doubt bordering on disdain toward masquerades. Clearly, though, this attitude is not universally held. A teenage girl and her little sister were among those who gathered when the drums announced the start of the Adamma performance held on our behalf. We invited them into our compound to see it, and the older girl came inside. The younger one, however, clung to the fence, half-sobbing. The teenager tried to bring her in but soon gave up and stood outside with her, explaining that her sister was too afraid of the masquerades. This episode suggests the anxiety generated in Igbo girls by even an entertaining and secular masquerade. None of the young boys in the audience expressed a similar fear, for most of them knew they would one day participate in masking.

The Scenario and the Video

The lead masker also gave us a copy of a typewritten scenario for Adamma, written in 1985, and lent us a videotape of a performance as well. (11) The scenario and the video differed from the oral accounts, the masked theatrical performance, and from each other, indicating that the maskers revised the play and main character several times and that some members of the troupe had been interested in telling Adamma's story across the range of dramatic modes available in southeastern Nigeria.

The scenario is rooted in colonial practice. The British introduced European theater to Nigeria in order to entertain their expatriates and to communicate British cultural values to Nigerian audiences. The education of Nigerian secondary school students included, where possible, the reading and production of European plays. These students also learned to write their own plays, which were an important component of the arts festivals that annually brought together secondary students from around Nigeria in arts competitions. The arts celebrated in these festivals were associated with European models of intellectual attainment, such as drawing, painting, poetry, and drama (D. Obi, personal communication, 1993). (12)

Meanwhile, it was the practice to educate talented colonial scholars in Britain. Some nascent playwrights, such as Wole Soyinka, received a college education in England in the 1950s, when avant garde plays rife with political and social commentary were part of the theatrical scene (Okpewho 1999:34). The rising middle class embraced the introduction of British theater during the late colonial and early national periods (Soyinka 1999:6-9), but as resistance to colonialism became more organized, Nigerians increasingly saw theater as an engaging medium for expressing concerns about colonialism, nationalism, the plight of the disempowered, and the efficacy of Nigerian cultural traditions (Soyinka 1999: 6-11).

Adamma's creator had taken a theater class in secondary school, and he wrote the scenario to apply his knowledge of the theater to masking. Together with a friend who was also a theater enthusiast, he produced a signed one-page document outlining the stages of the play. Titled "Scenario for Adamma Creative Performance" (J. Amankulor, personal communication, 1994), this early 1985 version (whose date corresponds with the one the masker gave for Adamma's invention) is divided into eight segments. It begins with Adamma's marriage, presents her virtuous hard work on the farm, and introduces a monster that steals one of Adamma's bangles. The theft leads to a struggle between the monster and the husband. "Meanwhile," according to the scenario, "the hunter enters from the fringe of the forest watching the monster defeat [the] Husband and trying to drag Adamma away expressing his brute love at the same time." Adamma resists and "prays for salvation." The hunter saves Adamma and kills the monster. He brings her husband back to life, and the whole village celebrates the monster's death (Amankulor & Enekwe 1985). Over the course of the next nine years, the masking troupe continued to alter details of the scenario's plot. Adamma's flirtatious vanity, her courting by the spirit, her realization that she had married a spirit, and her marriage to the palm-wine tapper are innovations not present in the original scenario.

Like the scenario, the videotaped version of an Adamma performance did not seem to adhere to the narrative of the play we saw in 1994. (13) It elaborated on Adamma's character and revealed additions to the scenario's basic themes. Set in the troupe's home village, the video, apparently made around 1992, included shots of the troupe preparing for their performance, but there was no hint of a larger masking society oversight that might be expected in a village context. These scenes emphasized the maskers as actors: when the drums called them in the early morning, one by one they ran out of their houses, pulling on shirts, hastily grabbing dance paraphernalia, and assembling outside--without their masks. This story within a story dramatically re-created Adamma as a village play. Scenes shifted between the villagers playing at being themselves and performing their masked characters.

Parody, Appropriation, and Gender Politics

The narrative themes of the Adamma play are not new. Simon Ottenberg reported that the Afikpo Igbo masked Okumpka play, performed in the 1950s and early 1960s, contained a skit in which a young woman refused to marry any of her many suitors before finally relenting (Ottenberg 1975:105). The Adamma play also emphasized a cycle of feminine vanity and willfulness that did not appear to be disrupted by the establishment of a proper marriage. At the conclusion of the play, the main character seems to become a good and settled wife, but her dancing and mimicry outside the narrative scenes--especially her seductive closing performance--indicate that her virtue may fail after all. These two aspects of Adamma are in tension with each other and with the moral of the play.

Although Adamma suggests women's potential for self-absorption and licentiousness--and even, as we will note, prostitution the enactment of these character flaws is meant to be highly amusing and entertaining, and it has probably led to her popularity. If Adamma were either the good woman who learns her lesson (as depicted in the scenario and in the main scenes of the masquerade play) or simply a harlot, she might be less interesting. As she repeatedly danced, waved, and flirted extravagantly with the audience, She seemed rather like a pop star playing to her fans.

In the 1994 performance, Adamma shifted fairly rapidly between her three main performative modes: the beautiful and virtuous daughter and wife; the glamorous, energetic pop star; and the disreputable vamp who wore flashy clothes and repeatedly raised her skirt as if to advertise her availability (Fig. 14). Adamma's parody of the way some women urinate in the open when there are no other toilet areas, by spreading her legs and raising her wrapper, also gave her an earthy quality that one Igbo woman described as "vulgar" (E. Okara, personal communication, 1994). Her oversized head-tie, splayed high above her forehead rather than precisely wrapped and folded around her head in typical Igbo fashion, also suggests the harlot, at least to some extent. In Black Gods and Kings, Robert Farris Thompson reports that Yoruba prostitutes in southern Nigeria in the 1960s advertised their services by wearing sloppy head-ties tied in a similar frontal crisscross pattern (1971:14/6). He identifies a Gelede mask in the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History as a portrayal of such a woman (Fig. 15). One other Yoruba-area masquerade, Egungun, portrays prostitutes in order to critique their behavior (Drewal & Drewal 1983:197-201; M. Drewal 1992).

[FIGURE 15 OMITTED]

The play we saw, however, clearly delineates a more ambiguous and complex character. Adamma is a presentation by men of Igbo femininity--glamorized, idealized, parodied, and controlled. While her green, gold, and red metallic body costume with its short skirt emphasizes her luxuriant sensuality, her waist beads indicate that she is marriageable and morally desirable. Together with her makeup and hair beads, Adamma is right on the line between fashionable and outrageous. The play emphasizes that femininity is a performance. The male interpretation of female dance elements undermines the womanly facade of the masquerade, so that Adamma, like other maiden spirits, confuses the division between masculine and feminine. The masculine identity of the performer is tacitly recognized by all except young child ten.

This male-developed story presents women as less morally responsible than men and needing male guidance to live up to their responsibilities. By holding this young woman accountable for the ills that befall her, masculinity is given greater value. Adamma, who stands in for marriageable women generally, makes a terrible mistake in not choosing one of the good men who courted her earlier on. It is she who initiates her marriage to the spirit husband in defiance of Igbo etiquette--for women are supposed to wait until men seek them out. (14) Yet Adamma embraces wifely virtue and works diligently within the bounds of her marriage to the spirit, demonstrating her essentially good female character. Her first marriage, the death of her spirit husband, and her attack by the leopard or monster would have been avoided had she behaved like a proper Igbo woman from the outset.

The palm-wine tapper who becomes Adamma's second husband appears to be a metaphor for men who feel threatened by young women's inappropriate assertiveness in marriage matters. Before her marriage to the spirit, Adamma would surely have rejected this laborer as a suitor, but he wins her by using his gun to demonstrate his virtuous and authoritative masculinity. Adamma's willful femininity would have resulted in disorder, with the animal realm symbolized by the leopard winning out over the human realm safeguarded by men. This is the one moment of the play when Adamma cedes control of the performance arena to the other characters: she stands at the margins while the palm-wine tapper dispatches the leopard. In her second marriage, Adamma seems to accept male authority and becomes a mother, as Igbo women should do.

A quote from an elder in a pamphlet produced for the Mmanwu Festival (1990:13) indicates a desire by many Igbo men to connect gender identity and gender politics with masquerades: "The masquerade institution is what separates men from the women showing us superior to them; it is the only thing that marks-off who is a man and who is a woman." Some men apparently perceive of gender identity as fluid and in need of stabilization. Yet the Adamma masquerade does not offer this stability. Danced and incarnated by a tall man, the lead character is represented as simultaneously female and male. Through parody, femininity is criticized and then idealized, controlled and, finally, playfully indulged. (13) Adamma's concluding flamboyant dance displays suggest that male authority may not control female behavior after all. It blurs the line between "femininity" as enacted by women, and the "feminine" critiqued by male maskers. Because their roles in Adamma chastise women for their vanity and assertiveness, these maskers are allowed to participate in Igbo femininity, normally off limits to men except in the performance of other humorous parodies of women or the maiden-spirit masquerades that honor virtuous female ancestors.

Although the main theme of the Adamma play and the act of masquerading itself are deeply rooted in Igbo tradition, the main character's costume and movements are contemporary components of southern Nigerian culture. A variety of dance styles invigorate Adamma's performance. For example, Nigerian women told us that young people should have a fast, energetic dance style, while the movements of elders should be slow and controlled to reflect their greater wisdom, status, and calmness. They also said that men should dance more vigorously than women. Adamma's dancing was an active, male-inflected version of young women's dance that sent dust flying around her feet and the rows of bells sewn on her legs jingling (Fig. 15). Periodically, however, one would glimpse some other dance movements. One night at an Enugu restaurant, we saw the pop singer Michael Jackson performing endlessly on an MTV videotape loop. With white-gloved hands he pressed the air in front of his body, pushed his palms down to his sides, and snapped his fingers as he sauntered about. At the Mmanwu Festival, the Adamma masker appeared to have incorporated elements of Jackson's dance routines, which themselves sometimes bear traces of African kinesthetic practices. The mix of Igbo tradition and global popular culture made for a quintessentially contemporary performance. This appropriation of and reinvention of pop star behavior was also expressed by Adamma's waving at the audience and her posing for the cameras.

[FIGURE 15 OMITTED]

In recent decades Igbo women have become increasingly active participants in the Nigerian economy, selling in the markets, running shops, and becoming college-educated professionals. Many are powerful, assertive, and glamorous as well as virtuous, dedicated, and hard working. Sometimes their new roles seem to conflict with traditional social values, leaving the subject of women's vanity ripe for parodic critique by men. This present-day situation is expressed in Adamma, just as participation in contemporary global society is reflected by the masking troupe's appropriation of Michael Jackson's dance moves and its adoption of the video medium and the theatrical scenario. Through her style, context, and dramatic form, Adamma ties together tradition, innovation, and contemporary experience in an entertaining masquerade.

[This article was accepted for publication in May 2001.]

The information presented here was gathered in Enugu, Aku, Ikolo, and Akama in 1993 and 1994 when we were in Nigeria studying the Mmanwu Festival. We would like to thank the following people for sharing their time, knowledge, and creativity with us while we were in Nigeria: Jasper Amankulor (February and March 1994), Charles Ezeorah (November-December 1993 and January-March 1994 in Enugu, Aku, and Nsukka), Elizabeth Okara (Enugu, March 1994), Lawrence Emeka (Enugu, December 1993 and March 1994), Robert Maduakor (October-December 1993, January-February 1994), Dorothy Obi (October-December 1993 and January-March 1994), Eunice Obi (January 1994), Fride Okoh (November and December 1993), Chief Nwakolobia Agu (January-March 1994), B. Egbeji (Enugu, November-December 1993, January-March 1994), R. Maduakor (Enugu, October-December 1993), and A. Umeh (Enugu, March 1994). We also wish to acknowledge the members of the Adamma masquerade troupe who performed so well in 1993 and 1994, as well as the many others who helped us in countess ways. Special thanks go to Simon Ottenberg, to the anonymous reviewers of African Arts, and finally to H.M. Cole, who gave us countless hours of advice and encouragement. This research was undertaken in part by a grant from the Santa Barbara Friends of Ethnic Arts.

(1.) Maiden-spirit performances in individual villages and clan areas are organized according to local tradition and the importation of new masquerading forms. Near Onitsha, far to the west of Enugu, these masquerades appear during festivals honoring ancestral daughters, and dance is the central element of their performances although they may also enact brief narrative elements. To the north of Enugu in Aku, maiden spirits appear as clan-based maskers during Odo ancestor festivals, while to the northeast, maiden-spirit maskers appear in plays, as does Adamma. The two most detailed analyses of these masquerades to date are Ames 1976, which provides music and notes relating to the Ikorodo masquerade of Obimo, and Cole & Aniakor 1984:120-28.

(2.) Several Nigerian scholars have focused on Igbo masking as a form of indigenous theater: see Amankulor 1982:46-58; Ihekweazu 1985; Emeka 1993; Enekwe 1987; Osadebe 1981. In some northern Igbo communities, masked plays are overseen not by the larger masquerade society but by volunteers, who create the play under the direction of a masquerade playwright and incorporate the improvisations of gifted members (Ottenberg 1975:87-88). Adamma appears to be organized in a similar fashion.

(3.) See Cole & Ross 1977:179-86 for another example of masking in a former British colony occurring during European festival days rather than remaining tied solely to the local festival calendar.

(4.) Although the Adamma masquerade has many secular qualities, we were not able to ascertain whether it was appropriate to reveal the identity of the Adamma masker. Out of respect for the conventions of secrecy that usually adhere to Igbo masking, we will not name him.

(5.) By the late 1980s similar masquerades were appearing at the festival, wearing Adamma-like wigs, flashy mass-produced clothing, and makeup. Nearly a dozen people in the early 1990s performed characters that seemed to be direct copies of Adamma. Two such troupes also appeared in the 1993 Mmanwu Festival, and they too were associated with particular villages. One of them had a sign that identified its female masker as Ada Eze: "The African Queen of Culture" (Fig. 8).

(6.) Simon Ottenberg notes that akparakpa dancers also appeared to mark the phases of the Okumpka play (1975:93-94).

(7.) Adamma had already been appearing in such secular contexts for several years, including a graduation party, and was scheduled to perform at a gospel concert. We were not able to determine whether Adamma appeared during masquerade festivals in Akama. This was likely the case, however, given the town's claim on the highway sign to be "The Village of Adamma Masquerade" and a video portraying the Adamma troupe being summoned by the masking society to perform.

(8.) We thank H. M. Cole for pointing out the meaning of her name.

(9.) By refusing suitors Adamma failed to assist her poor family, who would have benefited from the bride-price paid by a husband.

(10.) Beauty and wealth were, in the past at least, signs that the ancestors and spirits supported someone: prosperity indicated virtue. Since colonialism and independence, that trope has not always held true, for wealth may come not from hard work but from the spoils of corruption, as Igbo people often point out in polite conversation.

(11.) We are unaware of any other instances of a written scenario for a masquerade play. According to the few accounts known to us, the masquerade stories are usually invented during meetings of the group in charge of the performance.

(12.) Minutes of the Enugu Arts Council, 1964-1976.

(13.) On several occasions we saw other masquerades being videotaped by initiated men, just as one might document a family event for future personal viewing. The Adamma video, however, was a staged, creative endeavor by the troupe. It was apparently made around 1992.

(14.) Several women to whom we spoke agreed that this plot device illustrates male fear of female authority in the domestic realm: men wanted to believe they were in control, but women subtly shaped the terms of the relationship (R. Okonkwo personal communication, 1994; E. Obi, personal communication, 1994; E. Okaro, Personal communication, 1994).

(15.) The Adamma masquerade also caricatures masculinity: after all, the spirit husband is largely powerless, and the palm-wine tapper is ugly.

References cited

Amankulor, J.N. 1982. "Odo: The Mass Return of the Masked Dead among the Nsukka-Igbo," The Drama Review 26, 4 (Winter): 46-58.

Amankulor, J.N. 1985. "Festival Theatre in Traditional African Societies: An Igbo Case Study," in Traditional and Modern Culture, ed. Edith Ihekweazu, pp. 83-96. Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension Publishers.

Amankulor, Jasper and Ossie Enekwe. 1985. "Scenario for Adamma Creative Dramatic Performance." Manuscript. Akama, Nigeria.

Ames, David W. 1976. Nigeria III Igbo Music. Kassel: Barenreiter-Musicaphon. LP recording and pamphlet.

Cole, Herbert M. and Chike Aniakor. 1984. Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, UCLA.

Cole, H.M. and D. Ross. 1977. The Arts of Ghana. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, UCLA.

Mmanwu Festival pamphlet. 1990. Enugu: Council for Arts and Culture.

Drewal, Henry and Margaret Drewal. 1983. Gelede: Art and Female Power among the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Benjamin Hufbauer is an assistant professor in the Hite Art Institute, Fine Arts Department, University of Louisville.