Indiana University Press Masquerading Politics: Kinship, Gender, and Ethnicity in a Yoruba Town (African Expressive Cultures)

In West Africa, especially among Yoruba people, masquerades have the power to kill enemies, appoint kings, and grant fertility. John Thabiti Willis takes a close look at masquerade traditions in the Yoruba town of Otta, exploring transformations in performers, performances, and the institutional structures in which masquerade was used to reveal ongoing changes in notions of gender, kinship, and ethnic identity. As Willis focuses on performers and spectators, he reveals a history of masquerade that is rich and complex. His research offers a more nuanced understanding of performance practices in Africa and their role in forging alliances, consolidating state power, incorporating immigrants, executing criminals, and projecting individual and group power on both sides of the Afro-Atlantic world. Review [This] book as a whole stands as a major achievement not only in Yoruba history and historical anthropology, but in recent historiographic trends using ritual institutions and performances as primary historical sources. It will have a major impact in Yoruba studies, and in the study of West African history more generally. Willis should be commended for penetrating a complex and socially guarded ritual resource to glean the hidden histories manifested therein. Source: African Studies Review Review John Thabiti Willis cites oral traditions, archival sources, and publications to draw attention to the link between economic development and spectacular and historically influential masquerade performances. Author: Babatunde Lawal Source: author of The Gelede Spectacle From the Author John Thabiti Willis is Associate Professor of African History at Carleton College. He is an associate editor of the Journal of West African History. About the Author John Thabiti Willis is Associate Professor of African History at Carleton College. He is an associate editor of the Journal of West African History.