In Step with the Times: Mapiko Masquerades of Mozambique by Paolo Israel (review)

This book is not for the faint-hearted, and possibly not for the person wanting to know about the visual history of mapiko masks because there are so few illustrations, and all are black and white. It is, however, a study in great depth of the historiography of older mapiko masquerading in Mozambique, and an intricately woven social history of twentieth-century Makonde masking forms. In combining extensive archival and field research, Israel brings to light a wealth of detail on the ways in which masking has changed over time and in a variety of social and historical circumstances. One of the features of the book, possibly in an attempt to guide the reader through complex territory, is the (possibly thesis-remnant) preface to each section that maps out the trajectory of his exploration.

In Part 1, Israel considers the colonial archive and the ways in which the anthropological literature constructed and interpreted Makonde mapiko masquerades. Much of his attention is directed at the work by Jorgé Antonio Dias, his wife Margot Dias, and Manuel Viegas Guereiro, Os Macondes de Moçambique, a book largely unknown in Anglophone African art studies (Dias 1964, Dias and Dias 1964, 1970). He analyzes both this and the work of Robert Dick-Read (1964) as seeking explanations of the masking as a serious ritual logic, where the maintenance of masking secrecy constituted “a war between the sexes.” (Possibly lacking in this archival account is some of the German literature on Makonde masking). Israel explains the anthropological theory used in his exploration of Makonde masquerading’s emergence from the context of initiation and puberty rituals into a wider social sphere. He looks at the ways in which masks provide “a sensuous representation of the fundamental divide” (p. 41) created by social boundaries between men and women. The theory which forms the basis for Israel’s explanations of change and transformations of the masking genre is Bateson’s (1936) notion of “schismogenesis,” where competition acted out through rules of secrecy gives rise to differentiated social roles. His focus is on the role of social performance in accounting for the structures of division. This section concludes with a consideration of the place of mimesis and alterity in African masquerade history and a plea for abandoning a search for origins in favor of a closer analysis of the motivations and procedure of the mapiko players themselves.

The next two parts are organized according to historical circumstances of colonial and postcolonial periods. The first half runs from Portuguese occupation of the Makonde plateau in 1917 to the formation of FRELIMO in 1962, and the second, from the war of indepencence in 1962–1974 to the 1994 democratic elections at the end of the civil war. In these chapters Israel follows the vicissitudes of a variety of different genres of mapiko masking, largely male driven and performed, and female equivalents that arose and waned. Concerned with the masquerade as a totality, he examines the styles of the carved headpieces, some aspects of costume, various forms of dance (choreography), and the songs composed as part of the performances. Following the loosening lineage ties on the Makonde plateau after colonial domination, he offers a fascinating account of the ways in which inventiveness trumped “tradition” and the modernist tendency to abstraction in many of the head-pieces. He finds that this also allowed greater specialization among “talented” makers—leading to the emergence of masters of carving, singing, dancing and drumming. This is the “meat-is-meat” revolution that Israel suggests “evokes aesthetic universalism” (p. 76) but also allows the emergence of particular genres of mapiko.

The following chapter is devoted to a study of one such master of play, Nampyopyo, a generator of the new dutu (abstract) genre of masking, who was able to make faces that were clearly recognizable, but not tied to functions of...