Spirits incarnate: cultural revitalization in a Nigerian Masquerade Festival.

Under the cloudy skies that marked the declining days of the rainy season, the 1993 Enugu State Mmanwu Festival helped to modernize Igbo masking. Maskers and musicians, dancers and titled men paraded in the afternoon heat and helped shape traditional customs for use in contemporary Nigeria. Since its beginning in 1986, this ongoing urban masquerade festival has expressed both nostalgia for the past and anxiety about the future, and reflected ongoing political, technological, cultural, and economic change. The festival organizers attempted to create a tourist attraction to improve economic conditions by celebrating Igbo masquerade traditions that reflect social and political values. By altering and simulating these traditions, festival organizers worked to present a powerful art that they hoped would bring both moral virtue as well as economic benefits to the state.

Festival organizers attempted to repress the use of medicinal materials in masking performances while upholding the traditional organization of gender in Igbo masking. Despite changes in masking practice throughout the Igbo area in southern Nigeria, masking was still involved with male spiritual prerogatives where men act as priests to lineage ancestors and spirits. However, there was also substantial continuity in masking practices, particularly in towns and villages, although masking activities there were also affected by secularization and Christianization. The event helped to transform masking by introducing new performative and cultural pressures.

One change resulted from addressing the challenges of modernity. The rhetoric of modernity expressed by private citizens and members of the Mmanwu Festival committee was, I believe, closely associated with the long-term effects of colonialism, which emphasized the supposedly "primitive" nature of indigenous people and their need to become, through colonial and postcolonial economic processes, "modern" (Okoh, personal communication, 1993-94; Maduakor, personal communication 1993). One of the goals of the festival organizers was to show how an art form supposedly associated with "primitive" life was both deeply revered and honored, and yet could also be updated to reflect contemporary urban and secular conditions.

Enugu State has a largely Igbo population, and the majority of masquerades that appeared at the 1993 festival were drawn from Igbo villages where masking has long been practiced. Masquerades are called mmanwu or mmuo ("masked spirit"), and the spiritual aspect of these beings is fundamental to their appearance and performance among Igbo people. Through the agency of the masker who wears the costume, the invisible spirit is made physically tangible. Masquerades may accord honor to virtuous ancestors and shower blessings and abundance on the living. Some also punish miscreants. They make the mysterious powers of the spirit realm visible to the members of the village in which the spirits live. Spirits are omnipresent but unseen for most of the year until they appear in masked form.

Most masquerades are activated and protected by supernaturally charged "medicines," substances made from sacred materials that are placed on the masks or the bodies of the maskers. The medicines are the province of the men who are responsible for the presentation and care of the masquerade, the maskers, and spirits involved. For the most part, women keep their distance from masquerades, for masking-society rules decree that women shall not touch the masked spirits nor gain esoteric knowledge about them. According to many Igbo men with whom I spoke, women do not know that men incarnate these spirits. Igbo women refused comment, for both sexes keep the human component of masking a "public secret" (Blier 1993). Because masking involves spirits and medicines, women are careful to follow the rules, for their bodies and their fertility are at terrible risk if they do not.

The 1993 Enugu State Mmanwu Festival

Since 1986, the Arts Council (1) has sponsored the Mmanwu Festival. This festival presents Igbo masquerades to an urban, largely Igbo audience, and to a small number of tourists, using both European and Igbo modes of festivity. European festival models influenced the use of a stadium as a performance arena where spectators are separated from performers, as well as the presentation of each masking group as a discrete unit in a larger parade. (2) Igbo festival forms are found in the New Yam ceremony and in the abbreviated masking performances that are carried out in the main parade. By bringing so many masking troupes together outside their communities and assembling them according to the conventions of a European parade, the Enugu state organizers actively reconfigured their display of Igbo masking to fit the requirements of urban spectatorship and the state's social and political agendas.

In 1993, the festival consisted of three elements: a symposium on masking, a parade of night maskers, and a final daylight procession of masquerades. The festival opened with a scholarly symposium on that year's theme, "Mmanwu as Agent of Social Mobilization." (3) Scholars from around Enugu State participated in the event, which was, however, ill attended.

A few days later, a night masquerade procession was held in Nnamde Azikiwe Stadium. (4) Night masquerades are some of the most powerful and dangerous among Igbo people. They often appear in order to search out transgressors or to warn the citizenry to improve their behavior. They also serve as powerful sentries who keep watch through the night. Night maskers use strange sounds, rattle window shutters, and break walls. They pull down branches from trees to show their dangerous energies. The procession of night masks occurred in near darkness. Yet these masquerades did not threaten or attack. They were silhouetted against dim lights before disappearing in the dark as they approached the viewing area. Their performances consisted of eerie sounds and calls that echoed into the stadium. This event also had low attendance--perhaps because night masquerades depend so heavily on darkness, sound, and frightening action, and they cannot be easily transformed to fit into a passive stadium environment. Only men were present in the audience; in keeping with Igbo (night) masking conventions, women and children were kept away.

The daylight parade of maskers, the culminating event of the festival, took place the next day, with more than 5,000 spectators in attendance. By noon, officials, dance troupes, and participants in Iriji, the New Yam ceremony, filled the stadium floor. The ceremony drew upon the New Yam ceremonies typical of western Igbo communities, such as Nri and Onitsha, and upon the spiritual and political leadership manifest in celebrations in this region. In Nri, for instance, the Eze Nri, a sacred king, is traditionally given yams by the male citizenry, themselves priests to their family ancestors, to assure the blessing of that year's yam crop and the successful growth of yams in the future. In many Igbo communities, such festivals of thanksgiving are carried out in family compounds, with male patrilineage priests paying homage to the yam deity or the earth, then handing out new yams to their wives to cook for family feasts (Ezeabasili 1973:26).

The New Yam ceremony was incorporated into the festival to simulate an authentic Igbo context for the appearance of masquerades in the stadium. The New Yam ceremony in the Mmanwu Festival began at the entry to the track at the far end of the stadium. Chief Onwubuya danced forward, supported by musicians playing flutes and drums (Fig. 2). He selected a large yam from those on display and together with the musicians danced into the stadium seats to present the yam to Governor Nbodo (Fig. 3). Here the governor took on the role of a divine king, which exemplified the desire of some Nigerian officials to incorporate spiritually sanctioned political traditions--with their connotations of moral responsibility--within the symbolic structure of the state.

[FIGURES 2&3 OMITTED]

In the last thirty years, some Igbo villages have set aside a particular day for the celebration of Iriji, and in many villages the festival provides an opportunity for people who now work in the cities to return to the villages of their birth. According to Ezeabasili, village improvement societies, often financed and run by these emigrants, use such occasions to raise money for municipal improvements such as maternity clinics, hospitals, and schools (1973:26, 30). Such new yam festivals combine tradition with public and governmental concern for modern infrastructure and cultural improvement. Thus the New Yam ceremony served as a fitting beginning to the Mmanwu Festival and as a way to integrate government leaders and chiefs into its structure. Coupled with the theme for the 1993 event, "Mmanwu as Agent of Social Mobilization," it indicated that organizers hoped to encourage the citizenry to mobilize to meet the needs of Enugu State, much as new yam celebrations have brought improvements to local communities.

At the close of the New Yam ceremony, the Odozi Obodo women's dance troupe took the floor and began to perform a sedate and highly practiced dance with white cloths in each hand, to the accompaniment of pot drums (Fig. 4). They were followed by a boys' abarakpa dance troupe that performed unison dancing and feats of acrobatic prowess (Fig. 5). The boys' back flips brought yells of appreciation from the audience. After several minutes of dancing, they moved to one end of the reviewing area to make way for a troupe of girls and young women wearing bra tops, short skirts, and mirrored caps. The girls danced in a circle, using rapid footwork and synchronized gestures (Fig. 6). Members of the Arts Council and the Tourism Board told me that the dancers came out to give a greater sense of festivity to the daylight event. The incorporation of dancers also clearly drew on the state practice of having dancers entertain and educate guests. Finally, all three groups joined together in a concluding dance that inaugurated the masking parade. As they danced, Adamma, a male masker incarnating a maiden spirit, wearing a green and yellow ruffled chiffon skirt and a yellow blouse, joined the dancers (see Hufbauer and Reed 2003). This was the first masquerade to appear, and "her" dancing was met with cheers and a rising sense of excitement from the audience (Fig. 7). The spirits were out and the procession of masks had begun.

[FIGURES 4-7 OMITTED]

Following behind Adamma were the other members of her masquerade troupe: a spirit husband, a hunter, a leopard, and a little girl, as well as musicians and dancers, all male. (5) They carried a professionally painted sign adorned with an image of the maiden spirit. In the festival procession, each troupe carried a sign that identified the village and the name of the masquerade (Fig. 8). Some of these banners and signs were painted on cloth with images of a masker, while others, such as the Igba Mma Cultural Group, were led by elaborately designed placards. Troupes were preceded by a man carrying a small black sign with the name of the appropriate local government area in white letters (Fig. 9), similar to the signs carried by each national team at the opening and closing ceremonies of the International Olympics. The banners and signs rising in the air between attendants, identifying each of the masking troupes, brought an air of pageantry to the festival. The signs were necessary for many members of the audience, for knowledge of these masquerades, famed as they were in their own villages, could not be presumed in this urban context. The signs also emphasized the individuality of each troupe and separated one group from another as they proceeded down the stadium track.

[FIGURES 8&9 OMITTED]

John J. MacAloon has noted in his study of the Olympics (1984:243-9) that the stadium setting institutes the separation of audience from the performers, creating a passive, vision-based spectacle. Likewise, the Mmanwu Festival is structured around a passive spectacle upon which audience members can reflect. This form of spectatorship contrasts sharply with the interactive performances found in rural villages where most of these maskers normally appear. Yet the principle of the proscenium arch, which institutes the separation of spectators and performers, was continually subverted during the festival. Throughout the day, more and more men and boys made their way down to the floor of the stadium, evading police posted to keep them away, in order to join the maskers. Their willingness to resist the organization of the proscenium arch reflected a valued Igbo male prerogative--the right to see and accompany maskers.

The masquerade groups entered from one end of the stadium and paraded down the track in front of the stands. As they walked and danced down the track, each masking troupe performed short versions of their displays for the audience. A wire-enclosed government box served as the main reviewing stand for the parade. Each group paused as they reached this area in order to perform more fully. This area was the "stage" where masqueraders performed according to the particular genre of the group. The processional quality of the event demanded that each masquerade group perform differently from the way they did in their customary village settings. While each of the masking groups had its own particular style, the forward motion of the procession was externally regulated by officials, who limited the performative action that any group could undertake. The context of the procession created new, uniform limitations under which each group had to perform. Festival organizers aimed for a harmonious parade of different masquerades, the order of which was controlled by officials urging groups forward and holding them back.

Approximately fifty masquerade types appeared in the 1993 festival. One of the more spectacular was an eagle (Ugo). This large masquerade had appeared several times in past Mmanwu Festivals, and it fascinated the crowd when it appeared again (Fig. 10). The eagle is an important symbol of beauty and social stature for Igbo people--its feathers are used to mark senior male title status, and it figures prominently in proverbs that describe leadership, authority, and beauty. For example, the proverb, "The eagle kills seven times on its way to beauty," likens the eagle's renowned hunting skills to the accomplishments of honorable men (H.M. Cole, personal communication, 1990). Eagles turn white once they reach maturity. This Igbo proverb emphasizes that an eagle's skill and success at hunting develop over time, indicating that a mature eagle, like a senior man, is more beautiful and more powerful than he was when he was young. The white feathers of the eagle suggest moral purity as well as ties to the ancestors. Therefore, when a titled man wears such feathers, he is advertising his title status as well as his quality as a man who will soon be an ancestor (Cole and Aniakor 1984:47). The eagle masquerade held center stage far longer than others, as the spectators and the festival officials waited knowingly for the eagle's penultimate act. After circling and flapping its great wings, the eagle finally settled to the ground. The large, heavy-bodied bird began to rock back and forth, raising its tail and rising part way off the ground. After doing this for a few minutes the eagle rose and walked away, leaving a huge white egg on the ground, which a supporter immediately picked up and held aloft to the rousing applause of the audience.

[FIGURES 10 OMITTED]

Among the other masquerade types appearing in the festival were powerful red Agaba maskers (Fig. 1), graceful dancing maiden spirits (Fig. 11), and troupes of human-looking characters, including three other modern maiden spirits, similar in form to the Adamma masker who opened the parade (Fig. 12). Some masquerades emphasized mystery and strange energy. For example, a basket masquerade covered with raffia palm fiber, and no more than 2' tall and less than 3' across (61cm by 91cm), seemed to move inexplicably but haltingly along the parade route, directed by large supporters (Fig. 13). One man waved a chicken in front of and over its form and talked continuously to it. Periodically the basket masquerade would rise up and down slightly, causing the raffia fibers to flutter gently, and then it would quickly spin around to the delight of onlookers. This basket masquerade flowed onto the stage and spun repeatedly before scooting down and out of the performance space in a demonstration of the powerful forces controlled by members of that masking society.

[FIGURES 11&13 OMITTED]

A "wonder" masquerade from the village of Aku, in a cloth tube costume made out of long panels of local and commercial cloth, about 18' (5.5m) tall, undulated down the track before collapsing in front of the government box. When it collapsed, the masquerade flattened out and appeared to spectators to be only an empty sack. Slowly the mask arose, weaving back and forth, rising in the air, momentarily losing altitude before rising again (Fig. 14). According to one man from Aku, the "wonder" masquerade and other ostensibly secular masquerades had been banned in that town by the decision of the Odo masquerade society, which sponsors the appearance of highly sacred Odo maskers during a biannual festival in the village. Thus, in 1993, even though this novel mask was regarded with suspicion in its own town, it found an ideal venue in the urban, state-sponsored festival.

[FIGURE 14 OMITTED]

The end of the four-hour festival was marked by the appearance of the great masks Ijele and Eze Mmanwu. The now-massive crowd of boys and young men on the floor of the stadium began to run toward the far end in expectation. After a few minutes, the great metal gates opened for an Ijele masquerade that was considered the most spectacular mask in the festival by the organizers and the audience (Maduakor, personal communication, 1993; Nwakolobia, personal communication, 1993). This mask danced slowly forward with an extensive entourage of adult men and musicians, as well as a group of child maskers clad in white (Cover). The Ijele was framed by figures of policemen around the lower levels of the mask and figures of chiefs appeared throughout. A man on horseback, with an Ozo title, stood near the top, while an airplane surmounted the entire assemblage. Around the base of the mask a cloth python curled around itself.

Ijele masquerades are made from cloth-covered armatures, and the cloth is shaped into an elaborate mound over which are colorful canes. On this superstructure as many as forty stuffed cloth figures and animals are arranged. These figures--from pythons and policemen to women with children--reflect the vibrant life of a community. The form of the mound refers to termite nests that act as portals between the world of spirits (often situated in the earth) and the world of human beings. The connections between the two realms are clearly manifest in the form of the mask. As Henderson and Umunna (1988) have noted, arms stand out from the sides, suggesting a human being, while tassels which project from the top and sides refer to the crowns of some chiefs and to the great trees such men sometimes sit under in village councils. The costumes are covered with colorful and elaborately appliqued cloth panels that hang over the single masker inside. Such a huge and heavy mask as Ijele, perhaps 7' (2m) across and rising up from the head of the performer another 7' (2m), is extremely difficult to carry.

As the Ijele walked down the track, it twisted gracefully from side to side, causing its panels to gently rise. Once it reached the reviewing area, it began to perform more elaborately. Surrounded by musicians and men who directed its movement, and followed by child maskers, the Ijele begin to spin, slowly at first, then gaining speed. The centrifugal force generated by the spinning mask was carefully controlled, and the Ijele slowed and stopped without wobbling or stumbling. The Ijele began to pump up and down in a show of strength, which was especially impressive given the costume's weight and the humid afternoon temperatures of around 100[degrees]F (38[degrees]C). Spectators I spoke with identified this Ijele as a masquerade in control of potent spirit medicines, which protected the masker from harm while carrying it, and which could fend off the dangerous energies that might be directed against it by other masquerade troupes or people with hostile intentions.

The Ijele was followed by an Eze Mmanwu masquerade, also mound-shaped, but much lighter and less sculptural. Appliqued cloth formed a large central mound, about 6' (1.8m) wide; while from the top a chief's head, complete with red cap and eagle feathers carved in wood and painted in polychrome, rose from the mound (Fig. 15). A third, much smaller Ijele appeared, but its size and costume were far inferior to the other two great masks, and with its appearance people began to stream from the stadium. These remarkable masquerades brought an end to the festivities with their display of strength, beauty and mystery.

[FIGURE 15 OMITTED]

Cultural Revitalization and the Re-creation of Tradition

The Enugu State Mmanwu Festival reflects patterns of national policy that affect cultural tradition as well as the political organization of the state. In the mid-1980s, the national government under General Babangida sponsored a constitutional conference that encouraged "cultural expression" (Adefuye 1992). This type of encouragement, especially in the wake of FESTAC '77 (a huge international festival sponsored by Nigeria that celebrated the arts and culture of black Africa and its diaspora), helped establish an environment where the Mmanwu Festival could flourish. FESTAC '77 linked "culture" together with "modernity" in a manner that was socially relevant in Nigeria in 1993. On multiple levels, FESTAC '77 furthered the validation of particular cultural traditions through their description by academic and political elites in books and articles. Cultural traditions were encouraged insofar as they could promote "cultural revitalization" and become tourist events that would attract revenue to communities and states. Old art forms were to be used to generate a uniquely Nigerian experience of modern life. At the same time, the elevation of some of these cultural expressions distanced the selected art forms from their political and spiritual foundations in order to modernize them.

In 1993-94, I found the rhetoric of cultural revitalization to be prevalent at all levels of society. Articles addressing values and revitalization were published in newspapers, and political leaders from Sani Abacha, the chief of state, to Arts Council members suggested ways in which "culture" could be used to create a better future for Nigerians. While I was in Enugu, people brought up the need to remake Nigeria, referring fondly to the old days in the villages when corruption was supposedly unknown. The revitalization of Nigeria through the reclamation of skills and attributes of precolonial society was closely linked to expressions of nostalgia for the rural past. I believe the emphasis on nostalgic reminiscence indicated anxiety about a century marked by colonialism and military dictatorship, followed by a recent sharp decline in living standards and failure of infrastructure. In 1993 and 1994, the present and the future in Enugu and Nigeria were clouded by both economic and political ills. Nostalgic reminiscences about the past were held up as ideals that would greatly benefit society at large if only people would be willing to give up the conveniences and corruption then manifest in Nigeria.

In 1986, Anambra State established the Mmanwu Festival as a tourist venture. The aims of the Anambra State government were clearly described in the 1988 festival pamphlet:

   Mmanwu Festival was initiated primarily
   to project the rich tourist potentials
   of the Igbo people of the state.
   Tourism has in modern times become
   an effective source of revenue
   for state governments.... In spite of
   the rich tourist potentials of the state,
   tourism has yet to make its impact.
   The Mmanwu Festival has come to
   fill this gap (Anambra State Mmanwu
   Festival pamphlet 1988:17).

The development of the festival was meant to create a tourist industry in Anambra (and later Enugu) State (6) that would abstract elements of "tradition" in order to create a saleable product. FESTAC '77 had drawn large numbers of tourists to Nigeria, and demonstrated the financial benefit of tourism to the nation and the various locales that hosted FESTAC events; the Mmanwu Festival was intended to do the same for Enugu. The touristic nature of the event continued to be important in 1993. However, Chief Maduakor, director of the Arts Council for Enugu State, told me that domestic tourism had not been successful, and most spectators appeared to be from within the city of Enugu. The organizing committee had turned its attention to international tourism to publicize the value of Igbo traditions and gain access to the wealth that foreign tourists might bring to the state. Chief Maduakor and a former director, Mrs. Orjiekwe, expressed their opinions that the festival was a tourist success because during their tenures in office foreign ambassadors had been successfully invited to come and see the festival (Maduakor, personal communication, 1993; Star on Sunday, Enugu, November 28, 1993:9). The presence of the ambassadors served to legitimate state and national authority and gave government officials an opportunity to emphasize governmental rhetoric on progress and cultural revitalization. Organizers also hoped that the ambassadors would publicize the event internationally, bringing an increase in future tourism.

The need to create commodities out of events, traditions, and performances is reflected in the language used by elite members of Igbo society as they described cultural revitalization and nation building. The educated elites of Enugu State have also been instrumental in structuring the ideas that accompany the Mmanwu Festival, just as elites did during FESTAC '77. This excerpt from an essay by Dr. Lawrence Emeka, an eminent ethnomusicologist, in the 1993 Mmanwu Festival brochure demonstrates this concern with using tradition as a source for innovation and knowledge in contemporary society.

   Mmanwu arts and technologies
   are multisectoral and multidisciplinary.
   Anthropological data related
   to Mmanwu have for some time
   been collected and studied. And
   social engineers have been using
   the results of these studies. I have
   no doubt that if we research into all
   the technologies associated with
   Mmanwu with objectivity and sincerity
   we shall reap a rich harvest
   which we can rationally apply to
   departments of modern life (Emeka
   1993:27).

Throughout this century there has been pressure on masquerade societies to control certain kinds of behavior considered threatening to Christians, and to allow Christian men to join community-wide masquerade societies without making them swear "pagan" oaths on indigenous spirits, or participate in "pagan" worship (Onyeneke 1987:133--4). (7) A process of secularization has been ongoing for some time in Igbo territory. (8) Christians want the masquerades to be more secular. This secularizing process is a complex one, for many Igbo masquerades partake, in some degree, of the extant energies of the ancestors or spirits that inhabit the world. The Mmanwu Festival reflects this secularizing process, and could even be considered its result. For the festival, certain Igbo masking conventions are maintained--the relation of women to masking, for example--while others are carefully adjusted to fit new, "modern" values, such as the organization of masking as a spectacle and the repression of spirit medicines.

The Mmanwu Festival in 1993 actively maintained the boundaries between men and women that Igbo masking has historically delineated. At the start of the festival the organizing committee announced to me that I could not enter the stadium floor where the maskers were to appear because I was a woman. I had to sit in the stands in the VIP section because female procreativity is often considered repugnant to masking spirits, and is endangered by them. Although I was not allowed down on the floor to photograph the masquerades, I was able to interview administrators, masking troupe members, and spectators. My husband, on the other hand, was able to photograph the masking troupes throughout the day. When an exciting or mysterious performance would begin in the stadium below, men would leap from their seats and rush forward for a better view of the performance. None of the women sitting near me in the stands went forward with the men to watch the maskers. At most, they yelled for the men to sit down or half rose out of their seats to watch. Most of these women were government officials or the wives of such officials gathered in the government box. There appeared to be twenty women seated there along with thirty or so men. Beside me in the VIP seats were six women and perhaps fifty men, and below us in the uncovered seats there were no women at all. More women sat in the uncovered area on the other side of the government box, but they were much fewer in number than were the men.

Women, including highly educated urban women, feel threatened by many Nigerian masquerades, and as a result are always very respectful toward them. In discussions with me, women tended to blur the differences between various masquerades, subsuming all Igbo masking into one threatening mode. Masking in Igbo territory explicitly constrains and limits women politically as well as experientially. Several women told me that they either had never gone to the Mmanwu Festival out of fear of the masquerades or of the medicines that the maskers used, or had only gone once. Later I asked one of the masquerade officials why there were fewer women than men present at the festival. He thought for awhile and answered. "It is like my wife. I say, 'Come look at the soccer game,' and she does not come, she prefers 'Better Life' [women's dancing]9 to soccer or to masquerades. I tried to get her to come to this event but she came once another year, and she has not come back. It is not a woman's thing" (Obeta, personal communication, 1994).

Although the festival organizers were willing to press masquerades to create secular performances, they celebrated masquerade gender restrictions in both the pamphlets that accompanied the festival and their careful attention to prohibiting female contact with the masquerades. Indeed, knowledge of and participation in masking is considered an important marker of gender difference for many Igbo people. Modification of these gender roles would undoubtedly prove difficult, for the masculine nature of masking is pervasive. By contrast, the secularization of masking performances was easier to accomplish, for Christian pressure on indigenous spirits has been occurring for much of the twentieth century, thereby making the alteration of these masquerades possible outside their sacred village contexts.

The festival organizers modified certain aspects of Igbo masking in order to further their goal of using cultural traditions to educate and uplift contemporary society. I asked festival organizers about supernatural medicines and their use in the festival, because several people had mentioned in passing that strong medicines had been used in previous years and that the Ijele masquerade in the festival clearly marshaled medicinal powers. In the villages, where masks have long appeared, medicines are almost always used to activate and support the masquerades. The director, Chief Maduakor, told me that medicines had been banned from the festival because they reflected petty rivalries among masquerade troupes and because they were not appropriate for so public an event. He went on to say that belief in medicines demonstrated the nature of the superstitious mind. The prohibition of medicines also emphasized the value the organizers and sponsors of the festival placed on secular masquerades and on the ideals of modernity.

In addition to repressing supernatural medicines in the festival, the organizers emphasized the linear, segmented form of a parade as the dominant mode of display during the festival. The spectacular elements offered by each masquerade troupe were accentuated. Aspects of Igbo masking, including the performance of dramatic skits, the offering of gifts, and the giving and receiving of praise, were deleted by the organizers in order to fit the performances into this new parade mode, where most spectators do not share masking knowledge with the masquerade troupe. By limiting the performances to three minutes in the central space, the organizers ensured that the maskers had to decide what brief performative elements best represented their masquerade.

To many Nigerians, especially the educated elite, masquerading has the potential to improve the character of Enugu and Nigerian society. Elite members of society base this view both on their own experiences with masking and on materials gathered by anthropologists that describe the function of masking in village communities. These texts often emphasize entertainment, the regulation of women, and the regulation of society as a whole. This latter category often involves maskers honoring high-status elder men, as well as the punishment of lawbreakers.

In part because of colonialism and a series of corrupt military dictatorships, the disparities in wealth, power, and access to infrastructure in Nigeria are extreme. The country has been both politically tumultuous and tilled with hopeful expectation about the nation and its place in the world. Since wealth from the Nigerian oil fields has not solved its problems or fulfilled its hopes, cultural revitalization was held out as a possible solution. One important source of revitalization may be found in rural traditions that have become the object of nostalgia. Cultural elites, in Enugu at least, look to rural society, where most masquerades are located, as a source of tradition and knowledge that needs only some contemporary modification to be the foundation of a new and stronger Igbo culture and Nigerian society. Such cultural revitalization would be centered around ethnic traditions, rather than corrupt forms adopted under colonialism.

For some of the educated elite of Enugu State, cultural revitalization would valorize Igbo mores and values (Oji 1977:3). For others, the return to tradition as a source of improvement was a worrisome prospect, and cautions were liberally handed out regarding the shedding of negative traditions as well as the revitalization of positive ones (Ibiam 1977:2). Thus, some people asked that "pagan" activities, such as the use of medicines and sacrifice, be suppressed, while respect for one's elders and personal integrity, as expressed through traditional activities, be rigorously upheld. As a result, there were contradictions and conflicting desires among people looking to use masquerade for cultural revitalization. Uche Okeke describes the importance of the revitalization project:

   The truth is that Nigerians have as
   yet to come to terms with their destiny
   as a people and to develop a
   sense of appreciation of what they
   are and what they have.... It is
   for the literates or the educated to
   search and research and discover
   for themselves and for the future
   generations facts and fantasies of
   the past. Nigerians must recapture
   their identity, their self-respect
   (Okeke 1977:12-16).

Revitalizing and Modernizing Masking Traditions

The Mmanwu Festival demonstrated the state's involvement in cultural revitalization. The festival sought to focus attention on rural Igbo traditions, while simultaneously modifying them so that they would be appropriate for an urban and tourist audience. Scholarly and mass-media representations (the festival was videotaped, and then offered for sale by Nigerian television) were some of the tools through which tradition was understood and reintroduced into a society that was supposedly drifting from its roots. The souvenir pamphlets contained essays on Iriji, tourism, and masquerading, while the pamphlet and the seminar provided a public history of cultural traditions to educate and elevate "Igbo" and "Nigerian" consciousness. To this end, the annual themes of the Mmanwu Festival have emphasized discipline and respect for authority and valorized the work performed by masquerades on behalf of their communities. In the festival, the secular needs of the state downplayed the spiritual functions of masquerades and emphasized instead civic values, linking tradition and modernity in an ongoing discussion of citizenship and cultural identity. The festival altered Igbo masquerade traditions to urge the improvement of morality for the benefit of the state and its citizens. In the process, organizers attempted to undermine some spiritual elements that contribute to the power and meaning of masquerades. Nigerian laws have also superceded masquerade societies' rules and dimmed some of their authority, the authority the festival organizers hoped to emphasize by bringing the masquerades to the city.

Cultural revitalization worked well as a rhetorical strategy. Its effects, however, could not be demonstrably measured, except by the apparent popularity of the event. Urban men were interested in masking, although it is likely their interest stemmed more from the importance of masking to men in Igbo society than from an interest in cultural revitalization. The festival organizers could control the particular manner and length of a masquerade performance, but were less able to control the use of medicines. As far as I was able to determine, there were no mechanisms in place to prevent the use of medicines when troupes were preparing to perform. The organizers' claims to have banned medicines were disbelieved by many people, which emphasized a disconnection between what government officials claimed and what people knew to be true. Indeed, the limited ability of the organizers to control the maskers was demonstrated by their refusal to participate in a three-quarter-mile (1km) carnival-style parade in the intense heat.

However, the Arts Council and the Tourism Board generated a compelling parade of masks that attracted many proud spectators whether or not any of the lofty goals of cultural revitalization were realized. The organizers also hoped to create a Caribbean carnival-style spectacle that would draw in thousands of foreign tourists. This was impossible to achieve in 1993 given the political and economic conditions of the country and the lack of travel security. The organizers solicited tourists through contacts in the United States and planned to meet them at the airport, escort them to the festival, and take them to rural masking villages. As a result of political unrest, they cancelled the small tour group they had assembled.

The impetus for cultural revitalization came from educated elites, who created a paradoxical masquerade form, one where respect for local historical authorities and spirits was supposedly replaced with a secularized form that did not conflict with the laws of the state or its interests. The mysterious character of masking was emphasized, while simultaneously some of its awesome spiritual authority was repressed, both intentionally and unintentionally. The biggest change instituted by the organizers was the change in venue. Moving masks from their rural contexts to the stadium significantly affected their meaning, for the masquerades were separated from their local sources of spiritual power, which is based upon the authority of the ancestors and spirits who reside in a community. Although the organizers may not have been able to effectively ban medicines, the change in context profoundly altered the knowledge spectators shared with the spirits. In this case, the medium of cultural transmission--the stadium--had significantly affected Igbo masking.

In the Mmanwu Festival, cultural revitalization serves as a rhetorical strategy for diffusing negative energies, holding up positive cultural values and arts, and displaying, for a few spectacular hours, some of the spiritual, law-keeping, and awe-inducing arts of the masquerade. The simulation of tradition in the New Yam ceremony and the altered masking performances reflected the political goals of cultural revitalization through the creation of an urban spectacle. In the Mmanwu Festival, masquerades were altered to fit new needs and a new context and were given an opportunity to improvise new performative modes and rationales. In 1993, the urban masquerade festival achieved some of the organizers' aims, but most importantly, the spirits had come to visit the city and they did so with enthusiasm. Regardless of the aims of cultural revitalization, people and spirits had gathered in the stadium to experience the power of masquerades. That night the festivities continued on: A cocktail party at a lakeside resort sponsored by the organizers celebrated the festival's success, while in the compounds of urban-dwelling family members, the masking troupes celebrated, too. The changes brought to the masquerades that appeared in the festival are expressions of the ways masking constantly renews itself, while maintaining its roots in a long and venerated tradition.

notes

[This article was accepted for publication in February 2002.]

I would like to thank Benjamin Hufbauer for his support and assistance in the research and editing of this article, H. M. Cole for his continuing help and encouragement, and Amy Futa, Leslie Ellen Jones, and the three anonymous reviewers, whose insights and suggestions were of great use. Special thanks to the University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of the History of Art and Architecture and Santa Barbara Friends of Ethnic Art, which provided support for my research in Nigeria in 1993-94.

(1.) Until the early 1980s the Art Council was a voluntary community advisory group whose members were interested in encouraging and supporting the arts. At that time, the Arts Council was professionalized and placed under the control of the Ministry of Sports, Culture, Education, and Youth.

(2.) Awards are given to the most colorful, spectacular, and well-costumed masquerades, as well as to the best masquerade from out of state.

(3.) Previous years' themes include "Mmanwu as Agent of Social Control" and "Mmanwu as Entertainer," suggesting that the governmental organizers sought to indicate both formal aspects as well as socially significant qualities that would benefit the public.

(4.) The 1993 Enugu Mmanwu Festival parade took place in Nnamde Azikiwe stadium. The stadium was named after Nigeria's first elected president, an instrumental participant in the Nigerian struggle for independence from Great Britain. By naming the stadium after Nnamde Azikiwe, the military government paid homage to a beloved Igbo politidan and to republican government.

(5.) In a rare exception to this males-only rule, in 1975 the women of Izzi village group Nkalili were directed by the community oracle, Uke, to perform a masquerade based on the obodo enyi (elephant) form in the northeastern Igbo area as a form of thanksgiving for the orade's intervention on behalf of their children. For a discussion of this masquerade see Weston 1984.

(6.) Enugu State was formerly part of Anambra State, later separated by the federal government into two states. The Mmanwu Festival was inaugurated by the former Anambra State and took place in the then capital city of Enugu. When the two states separated, the Enugu State government continued the festival in the city of Enugu. However in 1993 Anambra State was rumored to be planning to hold a new Anambra State festival, which Enugu organizers feared would detract from their event. As a result they moved the date of the festival forward to the end of the rainy season to insure primacy to their event.

(7.) I use the term "pagan" reluctantly here, but it was used often by Nigerian Christians.

(8.) This pressure can be seen in villages where masquerades still carry out important ritual roles, and express venerated social values, such as the Odo festival in Aku. While I walked through Akn photographing Odo houses, a cousin of my friend stopped and discouraged me from paying attention to Odo, saying that it was a pagan practice, and that I should focus instead on non-pagan cultural activities.

(9.) The Women's Better Life association is a Pan-Nigeria organization begun by Mrs. Babangida during her husband's rule in Nigeria. It is concerned with improving life for women and their families in Nigeria, and in the Igbo area at least, is closely tied to dancing. Four days after the Mmanwu Festival the Enugu State Women's Better Life Dance Contest was held for a largely female audience, although there were proportionally more men present for the Better Life celebration than there were women at the Mmanwu festival.

References Cited

Adefuye, Ade. 1992. Culture and Foreign Policy: The Nigerian Example. Lagos: Nigerian Institute of International Affairs.

Anambra State Mmanwu Festival. 1988. Brochure, Ministry of Information, Social Development, Youth, Sports and Culture,

Blier, Suzanne Preston. 1993. "Art and Secret Agency: Concealment and Revelation in Artistic Expression." In Secrecy: African Art That Conceals and Reveals, edited by Mary H. Nooter. New York: Museum for African Art.

Cole, Herbert M., and Chike Aniakor. 1984. Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural Histor34 University of California.

Emeka, Lawrence N. 1993. "The Puny Has the Punch: Mmanwu Obiagu Genre for Effective Social Mobilization." Paper presented at Enugu Symposium on "Mmanwu as Agent of Socialization." Enugu, Nigeria.

Ezeabasili, Roy. 1973, "New Yam Festival." Obi Obodo 1 (5):26, 30.

Henderson, Richard N., and Ifekandu Umunna. 1988. "Leadership Symbolism in Onitsha Igbo Crowns and Ijele." African Arts 21 (2):28-37, 94-6.

Hufbauer, Benjamin, and Bess Reed. 2003. "Adamma: A Contemporary Igbo Maiden Spirit." African Arts 36 (3):56-65, 94-5.

Ibiam, Akanu. 1977. "Message by Dr. Akanu Poiam." Ugo 1 (Dec.):2-3.

MacAloon, John J., ed. 1984. Rite, Drama, Festival and Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.

Okeke, Uche. 1977. "The Place of Art in the Traditional Culture of Nigeria." Ugo 1 (December):12-16.

Onyeneke, Augustine O. 1987. The Dead among the Living: Masquerades in Igbo Society. Nsukka: Institute of African Studies.

Oji, Kanu. 1977. "Message by Chief Kanu Oji, The Eze-Aro of Arochukwu." Ugo 1 (Dec.):3.

Weston, Bonnie. 1984. "Northeastern Region." In Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos, edited by H. M. Cole and C. Aniakor, pp. 157-9. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California.