Dancing with Spirits in West Africa

Masks have been important to West African culture for centuries, long before they became popular in gift shops. Today, Zimbabwe produces most of the commercially produced masks in Africa, reproducing styles from all over the continent, though at the expense of authenticity. In reaction, a group of students in Burkina Faso took the initiative to preserve their culture with FESTIMA, the International Festival of Masks and the Arts.

Masked dance plays a central role in African communities, a medium for the people to communicate with the spirits, most commonly for weddings, funerals, harvests, initiation rites and more. By donning a ritual mask, the wearer is said to lose their identity and become a vessel for the animal or spirit the mask represents. Each mask has a unique cultural significance, with most African religions utilizing several types to represent their various deities. The Mali’s Dogon people, for example, have 78 different types of mask, with the level of detail signifying their importance.

The Dogon People, Bandiagara, Mali © Michele Alfieri | Dreamstime

FESTIMA features a multitude of West African styles, with costumed troupes coming from Benin, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, Togo and Senegal to Burkina Faso. Before the dancers enter the performance area, musicians play their traditional music with drums, whistles and balafons, a type of xylophone made of gourds. The pulsating beats invite their respective troupe, introducing a swirl of animals, plants and spirits.

More than 100,000 people come to this cultural gathering, which also hosts a massive marketplace with traditional West African crafts for sale, like gourd carvings, weavings, batik cloths and jewelry. Visitors also shouldn’t miss the griots, or storytellers practicing the tradition of oral history through song.

This year, FESTIMA begins Feb. 26 and lasts one week.