Oral Literature in Africa (78 page)

When the actors are ready, this is made known and the audience fall silent. At first only a cry is heard from an invisible actor calling on the audience in set phrases which are answered, line for line, by the chorus. Then the actor makes a hesitating entry. He presents a strange appearance, partly naked, his body covered with white ash, a short torn cloak on his shoulders, an old turban on his head, and rags hanging down his back. The orchestra persuade him to call the others, so he runs to the entrance and calls his comrades in an exaggerated and burlesque way, miming his impatience, listening for them, and running round the different entrances. At last the other actors enter. Each is dressed according to his role: one is an infirm old man, another is blind, lame, or a leper; other stock characters include an idiot, an unskilful hunter, a brigand, an adulterer, a deceived husband, a thief, and a sorcerer. They go right round the square, singing and dancing, and then retire, marking the end of the prologue and presentation.

These introductory sections are followed by the comedies themselves of which several are performed one after the other. These include titles like ‘The boastful coward’, ‘The adulterous wife’, ‘The deceived hunter’, ‘The sorcerer with large ears’, and ‘Thieves of yams’. The play entitled ‘The kola seller and the flirtatious wife’, one of seven described by Labouret and Travélé, can illustrate the type of plot and action involved. The dramatis personae are: the seller of kola nuts; Fatimata, a coquettish
woman (played by a young man); Fatimata’s husband; the chorus; and the orchestra.

Fatimata enters and sits in the centre, simpering, with a mirror on her knees; she is wearing an exaggerated dress with huge pearls in her hair and colossal bracelets. The kola seller comes in hesitatingly with his basket of kolas and asks the orchestra if this is a good place for selling kola nuts. When the musicians reply that it is, and, furthermore, that there is a pretty woman there too, the kola seller protests that he is not concerned with women, and dances in the square calling out ‘kolas for sale’. As he dances, he catches sight of Fatimata (still making herself up). He goes up to her, calling out persuasively about his kolas. When asked the price, he offers her a few kolas free, and steals up to her to present them. The scene is repeated several times—and results in his discovery that he has given all his merchandise away! The kola seller bemoans his fate exaggeratedly: all is finished, Fatimata has deceived him. She replies self-righteously: the kola seller for his part, she says, has been interfering with the end of her loin cloth. At first indignant at this charge, he finally decides he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and tries to pull her cloth right off. Up to now Fatimata has been all complaisance. But—the kolas finished—she now turns defensive and there is a violent tussle between her and the kola seller, with great leaps and vivid representation, prolonged or contracted according to the skill of the actors. Attracted by the noise, Fatimata’s husband now makes an imposing entry. When he hears Fatimata’s version of the story he attacks and beats the kola seller, and the play ends with him chasing his rival from the stage with Fatimata, all innocent, by his side.

A similar comedy was reported by Delafosse in 1916 from the Bambara (also Mande-speaking) who use the same term,
kote koma nyaga
, to refer to their plays. Again the characters are a wife (acted by a man), her husband, and her lover. The action takes place in the village square, surrounded by spectators, and with an orchestra and choir to take up and echo the actors’ songs.

The man and his wife enter and ask permission from the village elders (the orchestra) to set up house. Then, while the husband is occupied in building their hut, his wife catches sight of the third actor, her would-be lover. For the time being they have no opportunity to be together. But time passes and at last the husband’s crops are planted and ready for harvest (the whole process being vividly mimed by the actor). When they have harvested the crop the wife offers to go and pick off the seeds—an excuse,
of course, to be with her lover in the fields. But it is not long before her suspicious husband follows them. She sees him first—as she thinks—and hastily buries her lover under a pile of stalks. The husband pretends he has seen nothing and sits down. Then follows a conversation, with the husband on his side pretending ignorance, the wife more and more alarmed as detection seems to approach nearer:

He sets fire to the pile while his wife dances round it singing. At this the lover pushes his way out and takes to his heels, while the husband rushes after him shouting ‘Catch the rat that’s escaped from my pile of stalks’ (repeated several times). The three actors disappear and the audience bursts into laughter (Delafosse 1916: 352–4).

From these two examples of Mande comedies, it can be seen that both plot and characterization are simple and depend for their effect very largely on the actors’ art: we are told that they display great talent, based on keen observation and the exact imitation of gesture, voice, and intonation (Labouret and Travélé 1928: 92). The characters are conventional types. Most popular of all is the deceiving wife, represented (as in stories from the same locality) as a flirtatious and capricious liar, with both her actions and her husband’s jealousy satirically and comically portrayed. Similar stock characters also appear in Mandingo plays: the leper, ridiculed for his lack of fingers and consequent awkwardness; the thief; the coward; the boaster; and the sorcerer represented as an old woman, ugly and infirm, with huge ears and a frightening appearance.
⁶

These plays can be counted as comedies, satires on the foibles and ridiculous aspects of everyday life, particularly, marriage. In this sense they
can be called drama even though it is drama enlivened by music, dance, and mime as well as spoken conversation. However, such comedies, it appears, have only a limited distribution—basically among certain Mande-speaking peoples of Mali, Soudan, and the Ivory Coast.
⁷
Even within West Africa they are not widespread and—on present evidence at least—they provide the exception rather than the rule for full dramatic performances in Africa.
⁸

IV

The final class of dramatic phenomena to consider are the masquerades of West Africa. These are widespread in this part of Africa (including, to some extent, the Mande area) and take many different forms, but seem to be especially developed in the southern (forest) areas where the carving of wooden masks has reached such a high degree of artistic development. The masquerades—dances of masked figures of various kinds—probably vary throughout the region in content, purpose, and pattern, but they all seem to include certain elements of drama and are often referred to as ‘plays’. There is generally the idea of some kind of enactment or representation by the masked figure with great emphasis on costume (especially masks) and on music and dancing. On the other hand, there seems to be little or no linguistic content, though there is sometimes a rudimentary plot.

Rather than trying to describe all variations, I will speak of masquerades in South-Eastern Nigeria. It is in the forest (or once forest) regions of this area among the Ibo, Ijaw, and Ibibio peoples that, in the words of G. I. Jones, ‘Nigerian masked plays reach their greatest development’ (Jones 1945: 191). Even in this fairly circumscribed region there are variants enough. But it is clear from Jones’s article (‘Masked plays of South-eastern Nigeria’),
⁹
that they all share certain common features. There is always some religious element, a belief, for instance, that the masked figures are in some sense supernatural, or closely associated with supernatural beings. There is the disciplinary element expressed in the awe in which the masked dances are held by women and the uninitiated: the men who produce the play are initiates of
a secret society whose mysteries and rules they are bound to keep. Finally, there is always an element of pageantry and display; ‘however secret the society there is always an occasion when the community is inspired by the spectacle of the supernatural beings parading round in public, resplendent in all the finery the society can provide’ (Jones 1945: 196).

In different areas one or another of these aspects is to the fore. Thus in the Cross River region, where secret societies have such central importance, the element of display and pageantry is relatively undeveloped and the local ‘spirit plays’ stress the macabre and supernatural ‘to a degree unequalled in any of the other masked plays’ (Jones, 1945: 196). Among the Ibo, by contrast, with their democratic and independent traditions, the religious and disciplinary aspects have relatively little significance. There are many Ibo, Ibibio, and Ijaw groups, furthermore, who choose to use these masked plays primarily as vehicles for their artistic talent. ‘Here the play itself is the important thing; the supernatural element, particularly the feeling of fear, recedes and comedy and a sense of fun takes its place’ (Jones, 1945: 192; cf. also Messenger 1962). There is much display of fine costumes, masks, drumming, dancing, and singing. Acting too has a place:

Usually this acting is limited to each mask playing its own particular role without regard to the other characters, but in a few plays the masks act together in a complete drama. In one Ogoni play, for instance, all the masks appear as a group of decrepit old men and hold a meeting guying the local village elders. In another play the mask called ‘Doctor’, after boasting greatly of the potency of his medicines, tries them out on the mask called ‘Rain Maker’ and poisons him; in terror he appeals to Kamalu, the god of the rain, and after much comic byplay and bargaining as to the value of the sacrifice he must make to Kamalu, he succeeds in bringing ‘Rain Maker’ to life again.

(Jones 1945: 192–3)

Important varieties of masked plays in South-Eastern Nigeria are the Ibo and Ibibio ghost plays. These are enacted by dancers wearing true masks (i.e. right over their faces) and often elaborate costumes. The Northern Ibo ghost play (
Mau
), for instance, often includes a great variety of characters wearing masks or carved heads (or both). These masks have conventional meanings. Some are represented as masculine, some as feminine; some are fierce, some comic, some (mostly the feminine ones) beautiful. It is the ‘beautiful’ masks, portrayed according to Ibo ideas of stylized beauty and feminine character (but in fact worn by men), who do most of the actual dancing; first the ‘daughter’ masks appear and dance, then the ‘mothers’, and finally the ‘grandmother’ mask performs her solo dance. The comic
masks amuse by clowning, whereas the fierce ones are meant to frighten. Some are so fierce (especially those combining the features of lion, elephant, and buffalo) that they must be kept on a leash by their attendants; others are used to keep the crowd back from the dancers, and threaten them with whips. Miming and sometimes parody seem to be highly developed in these ‘plays’. In one instance,

When the play has just begun a white-faced mask with a cavalry moustache, wearing white ducks and a spotless sun-helmet, stalks into the arena and casts a supercilious eye over the scene. The play stops, the mask languidly signals them to proceed and strolls over to sit amongst the audience in the seat of honour. This character is Oyibo the White Man.

(Jones 1945: 193)

The importance of miming and even satire is brought out by another writer on Ibo masquerades (Boston 1960). In northern Iboland it is apparently the dramatic element that has been developed at the expense of the religious. But even here the element of plot is very undeveloped indeed compared to the emphasis on music and dancing. Boston expresses clearly the Ibo order of priorities when he writes:

Each type of masquerade has a characteristic rhythm, which is produced by a subtle and intricate combination of voices, instruments, and stylized movement, and this rhythm supplies a compulsive force to the performance, as the plot does in European drama. It also creates a dramatic link between the various elements of the masquerade, which are often scattered in different parts of the village.

(Boston 1960: 55)

Though there are several other types of Ibo and Ibibio ghost plays besides those mentioned, all seem to share the characteristic of less emphasis on plot than on miming, music, and dancing.

The third main variety of masquerade in South-Eastern Nigeria comprises the Ijaw water-spirit plays. The plays of one group of Ijaw peoples (the Kalabari) have been discussed by Horton and the outline of his account is followed closely.
¹⁰
In these plays too there is an emphasis on music, dance, and costume at the expense of linguistic content.

The plays are staged by the Kalabari
Ekine
Society. This is a religious and artistic association for men, separately organized in each Kalabari community. Each such society stages a cycle of thirty to fifty masquerade plays. The society is divided into grades through which members can progress according to their skill and on payment of a small fee. Each society has its own headman and certain other officials and its own rules
of behaviour; one of the strictest of these is the idea of concealment of certain activities from women. The plays themselves are connected with water spirits, and in the myths about their origin we are told how a woman was once abducted by the water spirits and was shown their special plays before she returned home; they were then taken over by the men as an art or recreation, but their religious significance was still remembered.