Superb Rare,African Mask,BOBO,Animal,Mask,Mascara

Superb Rare Old African Bobo Animal Mask

Dimension

18"H   x    6"W    x   8"D

Mid 20th Century

Age cracks

Stand is included 

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The Bobo are a Mande speaking people related linguistic4 and culturally to their neighbors to the northwest, the Bamana and Minianka. In the literature on African art they are ofien called the Bobo-Fing, but they call themselves Bobo. They number about 130,000 and live in Burkina Faso and Mali. They are farmers (seseme, sing. sasama), and in fact to be Bobo is to be a farmer. The major food crops are red sorghum, and pearl millet, which are the ancient crops of the traditional Bobo farmer as well asyams, and maize. They grow cotton and peanuts as cash crops. Their largest community is Bobo-Dioulasso, the second city of Burkina Faso, and smaller important communities include Fo, and Kouka in Burkina and Boura in Mali. The Bobo live in compact concentrated village communities of puddled adobe houses. Although they traditionally lived in two storey houses, with the upper floor reserved for the patriarch, few such houses remain as a result of the destruction of many Bobo communities by French artillery directed by Senegalese mercenaries in 1914 during the Bobo uprising against conscription into the French army. Like other peoples in Burkina Faso, the Bobo are allergic to centralized political authority, and all decisions were made on behalf of the community by councils of community elders. The Bobo creator god is Ruro, who formed the world from a ball of mud. He left behind his three sons, Kwere, Soxo and Dwo, of whom Dwo is represented by masks of both leaves and wood. The principal function of masks is in the context of men's initiation. In the southern Bobo area masks also appear at funerals. 

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