By Salami, Gitti
Drawing on the field of performance studies, this article investigates the nature of the alterations made between 1939 and 2001 to the overall format of the Yakurr Leboku festival, an annual new yam rite performed in the Middle Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria. Ideas promulgated within performance studies, largely the result of a dialogue that began in the early 1980s between anthropologist Victor Turner and avant-garde theater director Richard Schechner, have drawn attention to a close link between religious ritual and theatrical drama.1 The salient characteristics of these particular performance genres – one more closely associated with efficacy, the other with entertainment – although at first glance appearing to be diametrically opposed, in fact share constituent components and represent opposite ends of a “dialectical-dyadic continuum” (Schechner 1983:141). It appears that the Leboku festival, once a religious rite characterized by transformation brought about during a period of liminality, has largely been transformed into a theatrical drama that provides liminoid (liminal-like or metaphorical) experiences (Turner 1982:20- 60). Ritual and theatrical performances both entail the execution of rehearsed acts that exist independently from a performance script/ plan (mise-en-scene). They therefore involve actors’ and audience members’ agency, that is, participants’ capacity to deviate from the script and to respond during the performance to their own internal state or to external factors. Examples of the latter might be weather conditions or political upheaval. Additionally, these performances occur within a symbolic timeframe that is set apart from real time. They take place within a bounded performance arena, whether an open field demarcated by spectators or a proscenium theater (Schechner 1988:6-9, 61-5).
The greatest difference between ritual and theatrical drama resides not in their overall goal, for both try to effect change: ritual in participants’ status, and theater in actors’ and spectators’ consciousness. Rather, the distinction lies in the social environments that set the parameters for performance events. Thus, religious rites presuppose shared beliefs of members of a close-knit group and are largely regarded as a necessity. Engagement with a theatrical drama, on the other hand, appeals to select members of complex, large-scale societies and is pursued voluntarily within the framework of industrialized societies’ concept of leisure time (Turner 1982:29). Within this discourse, Turner points out that, in regards to performance, “all societies subsequent to the Industrial Revolution, including the industrialized Third World societies which, although dominantly agrarian, nevertheless represent the granaries or playground of metropolitan industrial societies” (ibid., p. 30) operate according to the parameters of largescale societies. Turner further notes that the symbols employed in rites staged by remote agrarian societies, far from being rigid, “have the character of dynamic semantic systems, gaining and losing meanings … as they ‘travel through a single rite or work of art, let alone through centuries of performance” (ibid., p. 22).
Despite these insights into the nature of performance, there is a tendency in art history to inscribe an exclusively inwardly focused potentiality on African festivals, i.e., an ability to communicate meaningfully only to members of the kinship-based groups that invented the celebrations’ sacred and secular rites (Reed 2005, Arua 1981, Ugonna 1981, Warren 1973). Tb concede to the contemporaneity of such communal presentations no more than a capacity to absorb foreign-induced changes to African material culture and societies’ sociopolitical, economic, and religious orientation does not do justice to the Yakurr Leboku festival.2
Analysis of this first-fruit rite as a Gesamtkunstwerk, along the lines of Herbert Cole’s examination of the Akan Odwira festival (Cole 1975), then, is not a matter of identifying modernity’s impact on Yakurr practices. Rather, as Sylvester Ogbechie asserts (2005:66), it is a question of decoding “indigenous knowledge systems” and of assessing the impact of Yakurr practices on a specifically African modernity. Also at issue is the nature of the contribution that an indigenous African genre such as the West African new yam festival makes to an economically globalizing world’s developing “intercultural aesthetic” (Schechner 1988:281).
When todays custodians of Yakurr culture-priest-chiefs who conduct most of the Leboku rites-discuss the efficacy of their performances, they only rarely make reference to the explicit objectives of the festival; these involve solicitation of tutelary spirits’ cooperation in securing an abundant harvest, maintaining peace, and facilitating human fertility. These goals, intertwined because working and defending the land requires a large population, are not Yakurr ritual actors’ primary concern.
The elderly priests, some of whom are devout Christians, instead frequently express concern with the constitution of their audiences and often contemplate the effect of the glamour of Yakurr “traditions” on foreign spectators. The Okpebili (town speaker) of Ugep, Cornelius Ikpi Edet, for example, explained that he intended to Westernize his office so that he would “seem less frightening to visitors.”3 Effiam Bassey, a priest-chief of Nko, also desired to communicate with a wider world. He explained, “the white man has exposed his culture on television. Anyone can see it. I expose [Yakurr] culture to you, so it [too] can be on television and everyone can see.”4 Much of the general Yakurr population concurs with this outlook. Ken Ubi wrote in the Nigerian Chronicle newspaper,
The festival is full of decency, tradition and custom depicting an African tradition and custom in its true perspective …. Indigenes of Ugep urban [sic] in Lagos should step up their publicity arrangements to attract the attention of the Blacks in America and elsewhere and in the international community (1999).
Clearly, the Leboku festival is no longer intended to function purely as a transformative rite aimed at a homogenous group; rather, as a theatrical drama it endeavors to educate a heterogeneous audience, one Yakurr society envisions as including people from all over the world (cf. Schechner 1988:172-3).
But what exactly does this remote citizenry wish to communicate to an international audience? Heeding Jan Vansina’s advice to make use of a historical process model in African art (1964:378-9), its importance reiterated by Sidney Kasfir (1984), I engage in a diachronic study of the Yakurr Leboku festival to look for an answer to this question. I acknowledge that this model has been criticized for not taking individuals’ agency or particular circumstances into account (Bentor 1994:19-20). However, it is the particular performance, according to Gawin Brown, that “constantly recasts the performance script” and thereby functions “as a cultural vehicle of transformation” (2003:6, emphasis in the original). Rather than ignoring the performative dimension of Yakurr cultural practice, my use of a historical process model assumes that historical change, evident in a comparison of two synchronic performances, is brought about by a series of alterations to rites’ forms, which originate in specific performance moments. In Yakurr culture, where alteration to formal aspects of rites is discouraged, the changes made to the ritual script at any one time are minute.5 They amount to a meaningful, clearly discernable trajectory only after a long period. I then compare my field notes of the 2001 festival in Ugep, a town of over 250,000 people, to Daryll Forde’s documentation of the same proceedings as they unfolded in 1939 in what was then the village of Umor, population 11,000 (1949, 1964). I benefit from examples of historical analysis of yam festivals such as of the Akan Odwira festival (Gilbert 1994), the Aro Ikeji festival (Bentor 1994, 2005), and the Benin Ague ceremony (Curnow 1997).
Forde’s objective was to systematically study a West African economic system in relationship to sociopolitical factors, not aesthetics per se. Thus his description of the festival is sparse, yet invaluable. As the only historical record of the Leboku festival, Forde’s text makes it possible to identify the society’s internal changes through “elements of culture that once were meaningful, but have lost their significance to the whole;”6 Vansina somewhat problematically refers to such elements of ritual as “fossils” (1964:376). Forde’s 1939 testimony also affords the opportunity to isolate aspects of the culture that Yakurr people hold sacrosanct. The latter, Stanley Tambiah explains in a different context, involve
principal cosmological notions … [or] orientating principles and conceptions that are … constantly used as yardsticks, and are considered worthy of perpetuating relatively unchanged” (1979:121).
Such a “complex permanent attitude,” as Suzanne Langer puts it (1951), which Clifford Geertz also locates in “expressions of human purpose and the pattern of experience [a people] collectively sustain” (20oob:96), lies at the heart of the Leboku festival’s outwardly- focused potentiality. Following Geertz’s notion that, as Catherine Bell observes (1997:66), ritual not only serves as a model of how things are, but also of how things should be, I submit that Yakurr people perpetuate their festival in part to present the sacrosanct principles of their customs to a globalizing world. In terms of social values, their culture’s essence serves as a viable if not superior alternative to a global culture that so far primarily appears to be determined by industrialized society. In doing this, I take to heart Richard Schechner’s cautionary remark that interpretations along these lines may be “unavoidably expressions of Western hegemony, attempts to cull and harvest the world’s cultures” (Schechner 1995:257). But I am also rather certain that if Yakurr priest-chiefs’ plea for a voice on a global stage goes unanswered, it is, as Ulf Hannerz asserts, because “grieving for the vanishing Other is after all in some ways easier than confronting it live and kicking” (1997:109).
CULTURAL BACKGROUND
Twenty-three priest-chiefs (bina, sg. ina), who constitute the council of elders (yabol), are the principle custodians of Yakurr culture and are its ritual actors. They represent either their matriclans, in which case they function at least nominally as priests of fertility shrines, or they lead patriclan-owned secret societies. As the traditional rulers of Yakurr society, they are charged to uphold customary law within the framework of Nigeria’s federal constitution.
These men are selected when they are in their fifties, after they have proven themselves in the community as farmers or have led successful careers within the Nigerian military, police force, or civil service. As such, they have varied educational backgrounds: Some bina have a postsecondary education and speak English fluently, while others, primarily the older chiefs, are illiterate and speak Pidgin English and/or Lokeh. The mens religions also vary, involving both local beliefs and practices and Christianity, with a greater personal affinity for one or the other. Accordingly, the men express different attitudes towards their performance practice. To some chiefs, the rites have efficacy and their accurate execution is of utmost importance, while to others the rituals merely represent a “custom,” maintained more for its folkloric value than its religious purpose.
Once installed, the bina serve for life. They abide by dietary and behavioral restrictions and appear in public wearing ritual attire at all times. On ordinary days, this consists of a “walking dress,” a wrapper made out of a printed cotton cloth; a woven shawl or a commercially produced towel draped over the left shoulder of an otherwise nude upper body; a jute cap; and camwood paste rubbed on bare feet. Constant chewing on a root keeps the men from divulging secrets.7 Their exotic appearance among people clad in modern Nigerian or European dress affords the bina great visibility in the town. In fact, they parade up and down the streets much of the day and are frequently seen in single-file processions on their way to council meetings, traditional weddings, or funerals. Dodging the elaborate greeting rites required by an encounter with them is almost impossible. The bina are everywhere and as performers they are always “on.”
These leaders of a once-egalitarian society are today headed by His Royal Highness Ubi Ujong Inah, the Obol Lopon of Ugep. The town leader assumes his role by virtue of his custodianship of the Odjokobi shrine, which has a protective function not only for the royal family, but for the whole town. The king, as people refer to him, has been in office since 1986. In 1999 he was appointed as the Paramount Ruler of Yakurr Local Government Area and since then has served on the Nigerian Council of Obas. The king holds daily audience at Umor Otutu Palace, an imposing building whose grounds in the center of the town constitute the ritual arena.8
The Yakurr Leboku festival, as a new yam rite, is part of an annual ritual cycle that entails a planting festival in March called Listomi/ Ukoong, and a two-week long harvest festival – Yose – and a purification rite – Saa – in November. Although these events continue to be executed and involve spectacular performances, they are of minor importance today.9 Saa draws a sizable crowd of children and young adults; symbolically chasing evil spirits out of town affords them an opportunity to release pent-up energy. On the other hand, citizens avoid any involvement with Lisetomi/Ukoong. As an esoteric practice during which the bina descend upon private compounds to seize chickens, Lisetomi/Ukoong is an aggressive act that situates the elders as superior to locally held Christian codes of ethics. Because of conversion to Christianity, people also tend to avoid their matriclans’ fertility rites at shrines dedicated to tutelary spirits during the harvest festival. The bina, presumably because of the lack of public interest, in turn do not talk about these annual routines very often.
The new yam festival, on the other hand, which consists of twenty- five distinct ritual acts executed over a period of two months between early July and the end of August, is an elaborate affair with many layers of meaning; it enjoys support from an overwhelming percentage of the population.10 It also gives rise locally to a critical discourse that extends beyond the Yakurr community. Ordinary people, priests of Yakurr religion, Christian pastors, politicians, and journalists all use the Leboku festival as a locus for reflecting on their ever-changing society.
Three examples shed light on this discourse. In 2001, some heavy- set women with a preference for wearing tight jeans brought a complaint before the king because of constant harassment from young men who challenged them to “kpaseke,” i.e., to “shake their behinds.” When the town leader issued a decree to end the aggravation, “kpaseke” spontaneously evolved into the slogan of that year’s festival. Soon everybody, even a masquerade, was dared to kpaseke. This scenario allowed people to air concerns about what constitutes appropriate decorum.
As an example of premeditated engagement of the festival as a forum for negotiating various factions’ interests, Father Joseph Ibu of the Catholic Diocese of Ogoja in Ugep explained,
The Christians come in to make sure nothing of [Leboku] comes from Satan . . . Gradual intervention by Christianity tried to baptize [Leboku] so that it would become a universal event.11
Today, members of Ibu’s congregation bring yams to church for a Christian purification rite before people celebrate Leboku.
A third example highlights political concerns. In 2005, Cross River State Governor Donald Duke, himself not of Yakurr descent, introduced to the Leboku festival a compulsory day of popular Yakurr dances as a means to unify the state’s diverse population and to attract tourism. Although Yakurr bina do not perform any rites on “Yakurr Day” and mockingly refer to this imposed “festival” event as “Donald Duke’s own,” it appears they nevertheless embrace state- wide promotion of Yakurr culture. As the king commented, “the governor invited a lot of friends from the outside to come and accompany him to make the festival really international. It was nice.”12
Local discourse, however, neither articulates concern with the aesthetic strategies employed to communicate various rites’ meanings, nor makes reference to several intertwined narratives that constitute the festival’s complex ritual structure. Aside from underlying concerns with stages of yam cultivation, performances convey deep-rooted notions about gender and about the relationship of Yakurr society to a wider world. The general theme of the festival – the idea that successful farming depends on human fertility and on safeguarded territory – is taken for granted, but people appear not to be aware of the intricacies of the Leboku drama’s script. These are so deeply embedded in minute gestures of seemingly disjointed rites that they are difficult to discern. It is these deeper knowledge systems that reveal the principles of Yakurr society, which the people hold to be sacrosanct and proffer to a global audience as worthy of contemplation. Drawing out these narratives requires a chronological overview of the festival events.
THE LEBOKU FESTIVAL OF 2001
When Obol Okalefong and his attendants march in single-file procession to the edge of town to fish at a sacred stream (Fig. 1), bystanders are struck with awe.13 Yakurr men, women, and children immediately withdraw to create a respectful distance between themselves and the ritually charged party. They resume their activities by the roadside only after the performers’ rhythmic sounding of bells has faded into the distance. Although there is nothing remarkable about this ceremony, called Omileta, as the first preparatory rite of the season it has a dramatic impact. Omileta disrupts the doldrums of ordinary village life. The bina’s ritual passage from one geographic location to another symbolizes transformation and signals the end of six months of grueling labor during oppressive heat (cf. Schechner 1983:245). Later that day, the yabol, the council of elders, gathers to plan subsequent festival events. The bina meet under “the shade,” a sun shelter erected over the cemetery of all former town leaders, which is situated on the palace grounds near the Odjokobi shrine. Seated on boulders that transmit ancestral wisdom to them – in Yakurr conception creativity is divinely inspired – the bina consume the consecrated fish procured earlier, and discuss/rehearse their various assignments.
Beginning the following afternoon, on six consecutive “big market days” (and these in turn are spaced six days apart), the messenger of the festival, Obol Leboku, positions himself at the entrances to the farm roads of various wards with a consecrated pot. He collects donations of palm wine from men returning from the bush (Fig. 2). For this ceremony, called Eti Kakomi (‘watching the road’), the messenger dresses in “traditional dress” resembling hunter and warrior attire, consisting of a short raffia cloth worn over shorts. The striped “towel,” now knotted around the waist, signifies a transcendent state. The chief’s feet are rubbed with red camwood paste, a symbol of fertility, and his legs are painted with yellow ejongo paste. Ejongo, which in the past was allegedly made from the mashed brains of the bina’s predecessors, indicates empowerment.14 This adornment and his comportment give the chief an otherworldly appearance. The rite is designed to communicate the festival’s dates. These do not have to be overtly stated, since word of the ceremony spreads quickly from compound to compound. The utter silence in which the exchanges between the messenger of the festival and the farmers take place accentuates the ritual calendar’s supernatural authorization. Silence in Yakurr culture functions as a framing device that situates performances in symbolic vs. real time, inviting spectators to “read meaning into whatever they witness” (Schechner 1988:8). The messenger’s positioning at the crossroads between the bush and the town is precarious.15 The festival hangs in the balance pending the palm-wine tappers’ responses. Their voluntary donations of wine symbolize the spirits’ blessing of and particular wards’ continued commitment to the “traditions.” As Gawin Brown (2003:5) points out, ritual activity is inherently indeterminate since actual performers and audience members alike possess the facility to deviate from the performance script.
Leboku Kepili (‘breaking of Leboku’) coincides with the last installment of Eti Kakomi, still three weeks before visitors typically arrive in town. Superficially, this event entails a feast sponsored by the town leader to express gratitude to the nine bina responsible for the festival. Prayer at Odjokobi shrine is followed by invocation of a spirit that resides in the sacred Leboku bundle. Officiating at shrines is a straightforward affair of praying, pouring libations, and marking ritual paraphernalia and participants’ chests with consecrated chalk. Here, this observance alerts ancestral spirits to the impending celebrations in their honor.
At a deeper level, what makes Leboku Kepili compelling as a performance is the seemingly undue dramatization of the bina’s procession from one ritual site to another (Fig. 3). The elders wait by the roadside near their various compounds to join the procession one by one. Led by the town speaker, as this lengthening file of men moves from one ina’s house to the next, it crisscrosses the town’s busiest intersection over and over again for no apparent reason. Since cultural precepts dictate that pedestrians stay back and watch from afar and that drivers and motorcyclists stop their vehicles for the event, the elders effectively arrest all traffic for several hours. The dignity that emanates from the bina’s silent passage renders the space around the men sacred, its edges defined by the audience. Through their acquiescence, the citizens endorse the perpetuation of the culture. They do so, said Edupon Ubor, “because the custom is so sweet.”16 The rite’s religious implications may be rejected by Ugep’s today primarily Christian citizens, but the simplicity with which the bina dramatize a history of cooperation between the town’s disparate clans and emphasize their equality inspires pride in Yakurr identity, if not, to use Victor Turner’s term, a sense of “spontaneous communitas” (1982:47).
Leboku Kepili draws far more attention to this disruption of modern life than it does to the rites conducted at shrines. The king confirmed this assessment. He explained that
the people who will be passing will be passing with bigger steps. And then they make sure they do not come back to meet [the bina] as they are passing. Everywhere is cleared. That is exactly the beauty of our tradition. When [the bina] are doing their thing, the people give them the chance to do it properly.17
Although the bina go through the motion of bringing various tutelary spirits into association with each other, the rite’s content today revolves around asserting the preeminence of indigenous over foreign-introduced culture, around avowing local identity in the face of conflicting demands made on it by national and global affiliations.
At an even deeper level, subtle details of Leboku Kepili confirm that its concern lies with safeguarding a close-knit community from an external threat. To use Victor Turner’s processual model of a social drama (1987:22), the ritual signals a breach in the social fabric and initiates action to deal with an ensuing crisis. The Leboku festival in essence is structured around a fictitious, victorious war fought against an unspecified enemy. The drama is drawn out over the entire festival and is replete with a victory celebration (Turner’s redressive action) and replenishment of life lost during battle (Turner’s reintegration).
Explicitly, Leboku Kepili marks the beginning of a liminal period during which it is strictly forbidden to make any loud noises. Again, silence is used to frame ritual events. Festivities, such as public ceremonies of secret societies, weddings, burials, or funerals, henceforth are suspended throughout the festival period so that one may discern an approaching enemy’s war drums. Less obviously, the town speaker, just before he joins the messenger of the festival at the very beginning of the ceremony (Fig. 4), ever so briefly turns his attention to a particular boulder at the foot of a tree in front of his compound and alternately places each of his feet on it. This act, which appears insignificant in the moment if it is noticed at all, entails ritual preparation required of warriors before they go to the battlefield. The boulder is one of eight akota (sg. lakota) war stones, animated rocks that are dispersed throughout town and function as oracles. In the event of a real war, soldiers gather around them to receive the associated spirits’ blessing the night before they move to the front. Further, the town speaker carries a spear, ukoongbulutu, said to render him and his charge immune to danger. The spear embodies the collective memory of the ancestors’ perilous migration from the people’s putative homeland in Akpa near the Nigerian/Cameroonian border, an event thought to have occurred during the eighteenth century when people in the wider region reconfigured themselves, probably in response to slave-trading in Calabar.18 More careful observation also shows that when the bina pass through the town center, they briefly fan out and subtly act as if they are scouting out enemies (Fig. 5). As has been shown, the deeper levels of meanings of Yakurr culture reside in minute details of the performance script; superficial or partial observation of festival events does not lay them bare.
Provisions ensue to deal with the loss of life anticipated from the fictitious war. Immediately after Leboku Kepili, young women, whose sexual maturation gives rise to added social anxiety, also enter a period of liminality They are off-limits to the touch of any man from this time until fertility rites at the end of the festival sanction their relationships with young men who have proven their prowess.
The women’s outfits (Fig. 6), which closely resemble those of better-known Monenkim initiates of Ejagham society (Thompson 1984, Roschenthaler 1993), derive in part from discarded seclusion practices – in the past, women spent substantial time in a “fattening room,” ostensibly in preparation for marriage but more generally to promote/ensure infertility. The attire consists of short wrappers and Western-style bras, heavy coiled brass bangles that reach from the ankle to the knee, accessories such as costume jewelry and handbags, and paraphernalia such as flywhisks and umbrellas. Bared bellies and seedpods draped around hips suggest childbearing capacity; a hairstyle designed to imitate yam heaps underscores women’s ability to nurture a family; peacock feathers inserted into the coiffure indicate association with the forces of the bush; and various forms of money (brass coils, cowries, and colonial coins) allude to wealth and set a high bar for potential suitors.
The young women parade up and down Ugep’s roads from morning to night, transformed into glamorous festival maidens. Their continuous presence creates a heightened atmosphere. Their colorful costumes punctuate the gloomy landscape typical of the rainy season, while the persistent beating of brass bangles echoes the thunderstorms that promise the maturation of yams. The festival maidens’ performances visually weave the bina’s seemingly disjointed, sporadically occurring rites into a continuous, well-structured display.
Moreover, the stomping of brass bangles provides the warriors with spiritual reinforcement, although Christian women in Ugep today vehemently deny this aspect. According to Yakurr lore, brass bangles, which are incorporated into fertility shrines throughout the region (Peek and Nicklin 2002), are associated in Yakurr society with the invocation of various conflated female spirits, the most important of which, Mma Esekpa, is thought to have installed the akota war stones from which the warriors derive their power. Thus, although Yakurr people assign no more than an ornamental function to the festival maidens’ role during Leboku, it is actually substantial. Yakurr oral history is full of women who, like the maidens, temporarily exchange their childbearing capacity for the ability to communicate with spirits. These spirits consistently furnish women with the facility to invent cultural institutions and to establish the social order.19
While festival maidens’ performances inform intertwined narratives about yam cultivation, gender expectations, the significance of tutelary spirits, and Yakurr society’s adverse relationship with foreign foes, they also illustrate the degree to which liminal ritual has become liminoid theatrical drama. Today’s festival maidens are unaware of the spiritual connotations of their performances. They participate “to promote Umor culture, to keep the glamour and fun of it,” and to honor their mothers.20 Rather than performing rituals, they see themselves as reenacting rites in which their mothers took part; their engagement is not one of “doing” but of “showing of doing” (Schechner 1988:108). It must be mentioned that participation by young women in these performances is dwindling. In 2001, I estimate there were no more than 500 festival maidens in Ugep, and most of them girls under the age of 12. In Idomi, there were less than a dozen. Young women who hold jobs or study at the university do not have the time to devote themselves to these performances. In addition, Christianity’s requirement for modesty and the bangles’ association with the ancestress Mma Esekpa create a moral conflict for the young women. Nevertheless, the festival maidens’ number increases during subsequent weeks and the atmosphere in the town becomes more and more charged. People wind up their farm work, refurbish their homes, and prepare for the arrival of guests. As members of age grades they additionally take charge of repainting the palace, restoring civic sculptures, and cleaning up roads.
Three days before the climax of the festival and three “traditional” (six-day) weeks after Leboku Kepili, the bina go to work in earnest. For Oboku Pom (‘morning prayer’,) executed by the messenger of the festival, the bina clear the roads along a ritual route that links the Odjokobi and Obolene shrines (both in vicinity of the palace) with the shrine of Korta (a male initiation society) and the compound of the late leader of Ekao (a female initiation society). The male initiation society’s function as a regulatory society is today much diminished. The women’s initiation society has been leaderless for more than half a century and completely defunct for two decades. Nevertheless, the messenger of the festival traverses the considerable distance between these destinations three times. He does so with great fanfare (Fig. 7). He forcefully reprimands bystanders for inappropriate behavior and fines the occasional person who intercepts his path. The associated rituals at the sacred sites are all but nonexistent; the ceremony has lost its original meaning. As with Leboku Kepili, Oboku Pom deemphasizes religious signification and instead “presences” the indigenous culture by accentuating the bina’s sway over the population.
Immediately after Oboku Pom, the king ceremoniously cuts firewood for use during a subsequent night ceremony and stores it underneath the rafters of “the shade” (Fig. 8). In the past, such wood derived from maidens’ “marriage piles” (Forde 1964:240), but today a couple of random branches suffice. As this is the only public ritual executed by the king, it is much applauded. The ceremony, Mangkepai, is accompanied by the eerie sounds of bull-roarers and a membrane- covered bamboo flute that distorts words sung into it. This auditory dimension insinuates the spirit world’s approval. Just as silence functions in Yakurr society to demarcate a symbolic timeframe, noise is used to signify an opening between the terrestrial and spiritual realms.
Very early in the morning of the following day, known as Mblami day, women go to their farms and openly harvest new yams for the first time. In the afternoon, they dress in their finest attire, parade the tubers through town, and then display them in front of the palace either in brand-new enamel basins or in “traditional” wooden containers. The designation “Mblami” indicates that in the past women adorned their skin for this purpose with a form of body painting of the same name. As recently as a decade ago, I was told, virtually the whole female population took part. In 1998 and 2001, however, the number of women who appeared at the palace with yams during the course of the day was very small, less than thirty. As with festival maidens, these women made a conscious effort to preserve the culture and their performance was theatrical, not ritual.
Concurrently, the festival’s drummers, dressed as and acting like fierce warriors, collect and reskin the Ekoi (war) drums in preparation for the main celebration. The instruments are dispersed in several bina’s compounds so that “if there is any danger, not all of them should be affected.”21 Ekpakeke (Fig. 9), as the ceremony is called, dramatizes the fear that the original owners of the drums, from whom they were stolen when Yakurr people conquered the region, might some day return for their belongings.22 Precaution is also taken during later performances at the palace, at which time the drums are hidden inside a palm-frond enclosure (ekoiben). Ekpakeke thus serves as an example of a rite that reinforces Yakurr identity through the reenactment of local history. In fact, minute aspects of the ritual script-a gesture here or an emblem thereencode specific historic events. A detailed account of these, however, goes beyond the scope of this article.
Around Mblami day, expatriates begin to arrive in town in great numbers. These men and women, who earn their living in Port Harcourt, Abuja, or Lagos, soon visually command the scene. Dressed in immaculate boubous or “up-and-downs” made of exquisite fabrics, they emerge out of Peugeots and Mercedes that soon clog up the narrow mud roads. As they file into hotels and visit beer parlors, pay their respects to the king, and partake in family meetings, the clanking of bottles carried in crates and the smell of goat meat roasted on grills increase exponentially.
Shortly after midnight, the nine bina set out to call on the ancestors to join the living. This is a ritual for which a curfew is imposed on the town for residents and visitors alike. Despite the size of the population and its conversion to Christianity, people strictly adhere to the prescribed protocol.23 During the ceremony, called Okondel, the messenger lights a fire in the arena using burning embers handed to him by the king. Then he cooks yams for sacrifice to the ancestors and informs the other chiefs that preparations are complete. Once the town speaker has received this message, he prays as loudly as he can, “[holding] so many things and [standing] on so many things to really conjure up the gods.”24 He recounted,
When I move out enveloped in the night at about 2 am, I go out and offer the prayers …. Otherwise, all others, they stay in their houses. They listen very attentively because the manner in which I offer the prayers and what I say is so sentimental, so sweet, very nice, and very stoical that everybody would like to hear.25
During the rest of the night, the bina activate the eight akota war stones. They are supported in this activity by members of Lekpedunga, who sound tusk trumpets and bullroarers and imitate shrill animal sounds. This reverberation, mixed with the shuffling of feet and amplified by its secrecy, is an effective dramatic device that invites contemplation of the ethereal. Afterwards, the original owner of the Leboku festival, Obol Atewa, conducts a prayer at a shrine in his ward. From there, he walks to a shrine located two miles out of town to bury the remains of the sacrificial meal.26 The bina finish up this “sequence of episodes in sacred space-time” (Turner 1982:27) around 5 am, after the Presbyterian church bell has already rung in the next day.
Two hours later on Janan Boku (‘People’s Day’), the bina sit in state in front of the palace to eat and sanction everyone else’s consumption of new yams. This event, called Akong, is preceded by a dance at a site, which the chiefs also visit in November, when they chase evil spirits out of town. There, Onun Eko, the chief of war, dances with spears associated with the town’s main fertility shrine (Forde 1964:244).27 He wears the attire of a victorious warrior, for he is dressed in a lavish textile wrapper with a striped “towel” draped around his waist. His upper arms are decorated with fleece from sacrificial rams’ necks. Suddenly, he slams his weapons into the ground. When carried to the warfront, these spears are said to facilitate victory. Staked into the ground at this particular site, they constitute a declaration of war. Recognition of this rite’s significance to the warfare structure of the Leboku festival, dependent on the knowledge that this particular performer is indeed the chief of war, escapes casual observation. To gain a real understanding of Yakurr culture, one must delve into the intricacies of Yakurr symbols.
Concurrently, ordinary Yakurr citizens conduct private rites at tombs of their female ancestors who died during the preceding year. This observance involves sacrifices and a feast. As one of the most cherished aspects of the culture, it is repeated at male ancestors’ tombs the following morning.
In the afternoon, two secret societies are highlighted. The first, Lekpedunga, involves the men who were active the night before. Now they display their instruments of power publicly. Their leader carries a huge, flat basket that invites speculation as to its content. He pivots this object around his own axis, side to side, throughout the several-hours-long procession (Fig. 10). Other bina carry fear-inspiring clubs and medicine-filled baskets that double as stools. Thereafter, Ekpongkara, an aspect of Kekpan, the most highly respected and still greatly feared society, takes over the arena. More than forty men join hands to dance around the palace and various wards’ town halls. They reenact the cover-up of a crime that in ancient times led to the founding of their society (Fig. 11). Bundles said to contain the skulls of two murder victims are carried ahead of their procession, while a female member impersonates a witness who observed the original felony. Although both societies are today largely ceremonial, Lekpedunga’s and Ekpongkara’s displays still evoke a sense of the enormous power they wielded in precolonial times. The evening and night hold much excitement. Young men and women initially divide their attention between a generally frowned-upon government-sponsored “Miss Leboku” contest held at a hotel and socializing in groups that leisurely stroll towards the palace. By midnight, the entire arena is filled with thousands of people who sing and dance and eagerly await the commencement of the Ekoi drumming. Reinforced by the maidens’ bangles, the drums eventually produce a solemn, almost foreboding rhythm that appears to narrate the fictitious, offstage battle. Local historian Ibor Esu Oden explained,
The beating of our Ekoi drums is telling something. That which it is telling is in Agwagune language:
Umabah yeteh, umabah ye tern tern.
Umabah yeteh, umabah ye tern tern.
Umabah yeteh, umabah ye tern tern.
Meaning, the people who kill our fathers is those who are shooting gun: Tern, tern. They are shooting their gun: Tern, tern. The shouting: Oh hoiyeh, oh hoi; that is remembering the old people who died in the family … that time. Instead of you to cry, you will not cry during that time. You will say: Oh hoiyeh, oh hoi.28
It is of interest that the enemy at the time of the festival’s inception apparently possessed Western-derived weapons.
Just a few hours later, early in the morning of Ledam Boku (‘Men’s Day’), citizens persuade Etangala, a masquerade associated with a spirit that protects crops, to leave his forest abode and to circumambulate the town. They produce polyphonous rhythms with dried bamboo sticks and sing songs to entice Etangala to show his prowess (Fig. 12). An entourage controls the mask via chains and staffs, but Etangala nevertheless chases after men who dare him and threatens them with his machete. His iconography derives from Obam, a hunter and warrior society, but the gestures used are those employed by Ekpe, the famed leopard society of the region (Nicklin and Salmons 1982, Leib and Romano 1984, Ottenberg and Knudson 1985). Now and then, the audience encircles and humiliates a person perceived to have committed an offense during the past year. As such, the masquerade has a regulatory function. In addition, Etangala gathers an audience for the bina’s grand entry onto the festival grounds.
After a respite, people gather at the arena around 3 pm to witness the highlights of the celebrations. These bear all the trappings of modern Nigerian festivities, from plastic chairs set up under canopies and announcements of who is who over public address systems, to soldiers who control the masses. While young men shoot guns to scare off witches, festival maidens parade up and down the road in front of the audience (Fig. 13). The seemingly incidental juxtaposition of the maidens with the frina/warriors at various moments during the festival, amplified on this occasion, models idealized Yakurr gender relationships in which the promise of young women’s fecundity is best supported by mature warriors’ proven capacity to sustain and protect families.
On the palace grounds, at quite some distance from the audience, drummers carefully guard their enclosure, while a party of five bina led by Ebinyang (Fig. 14), the festivals host, ritually secures the arena. Ebinyang moves about to the droning Ekoi rhythm throughout the afternoon. His eyes are encircled with yellow paste to indicate mystic vision, and he carries a talisman and a sword marked with a prayer for peace, power, and fertility.
The remaining bina (Fig. 15), accompanied by stool bearers, enter the festival grounds in two merging lines (Ekoi Kemle). They wear their “ceremonial dress,” wrappers made of forty-eight feet of cloth, festive “towels” draped over the shoulder, and an array of hats. The town speaker’s jute cap is set with human teeth, while those of representatives of the original clans are decorated with leopard claws. The indigenous caps are worn in addition to foreign- introduced red stocking caps and bowler hats. To demonstrate that the bina are in awe of their responsibility, they shake their staffs of office, reed brooms. The reeds symbolize the people while the handle suggests the chiefs’ firm grip on power. Once the elders are seated in state (Figs. 16-17), citizens show them appreciation by throwing money at their feet.
The proclaimed climax of the event consists of the Ekoi war dance, which is performed by two or sometimes three specially selected men. Here the warfare structure of the festival comes almost full circle, for the Ekoi dance is a victory celebration. The dance is not particularly flamboyant in terms of footwork, but rather consists of enormously dignified but subtle bouncing movements. The occasional leap into the air on one foot just before changing directions (Fig. 18) allows the dancers to gracefully demonstrate their power and victorious spirit.
After reverse processions, the day ends with a final sacrifice made by the town speaker. When he returns to the arena, carrying a talisman designed to facilitate fertility, the Ekoi drumming stops.
The “small market day” three days later, festival maidens perform dances around their respective wards’ town halls while other people go about their ordinary business. For Lete Boku, they line up according to their strength (Fig. 19), which was determined earlier during wrestling competitions. The girls’ somber expression and restrained body movements are due to the weight of the bangles, but are also culturally prescribed. Women in Yakurr society are conditioned to act “cool” and to contain their emotions.
This overture towards replenishing life lost during battle is complemented the following “big market day.” Early in the morning, Obla, the head of the diviners, briefly initiates young men into a fertility spirit during Lobo/Yekpi. Possessed, the initiates (yabunga) run into the bush and uproot trees with their bare hands. Procuring a year’s supply of sacred firewood for preparation of ritual meals in this fashion allows the initiates to demonstrate their prowess. As a countermeasure to the young men’s exuberance, the diviner circumambulates the town and brings blessing to all clans’ fertility shrines, accompanied by an ensemble of men who play rhythms on dried turtle shells (Fig. 20).
In the afternoon, for a ceremony called Yabunga that draws as large a crowd as the Ekoi drumming, the young men drag trees through town. Equipped with whips, they defend themselves against insults hurled at them so that they might prove their manhood (Fig. 21). As this ceremony concludes the festival maidens’ liminal state, men’s demonstration of their prowess involves mock sexual intercourse (Fig. 22). People burst out laughing at the displays and joyously dowse couples with talcum powder, ordinarily symbolic of the desire to conceive.
One week later, the festival ends. Young men of Liben, a wardbased organization, produce a racket with rattles and impromptu songs that address social issues and criticize the government (Fig. 23). Throughout the night, they move from compound to compound to sweep away evil spirits. During the morning, they circumambulate the town halls led by the bina. The vigor of their dance, the frenzy of their proclamations, and the threats contained in their lyrics, leave the town feeling “hot” but the men fully in control of their community and their lives. Concurrently, two priestesses “cool” the town by spraying it with consecrated water in a rite called Yepoonfawa (Fig. 24).
A final “royal” dance, Odele, is rather esoteric, its symbolism obscure. It appears to represent the spirits’ retreat to the underworld, but also implies a demand for human sacrifice. In Yakurr lore, the latter always involves the pledging of a victim to the spirit world rather than outright execution. Dancers, who are said to die soon after their performance, are said to bend over as if they were very old men.29 They miss all of their dance steps, which are performed to barely audible, seemingly distant music. Odele inverts ordinary reality as it represents the official end of the festival.
For another week, however, as the festive atmosphere slowly dissipates, young children are given a chance to perform Egbendum and Oka dances. With the help of sponsors, who organize the children into pretend associations and supervise their progress throughout the festival, the youngsters not only learn to master roles that enable them to perpetuate the “traditions” in the future, but much more importantly, they are conditioned to filter their experiences through the logic of Yakurr conceptions and idioms.
THE LEBOKU FESTIVAL OF 1939
Daryll Forde’s documentation of the Leboku festival as it unfolded in 1939 is almost identical to my description of the 2001 festival, yet the two events have almost nothing in common. Forde observed of the festival that its primary concern in 1939 was with “an integrative function with respect to the community which far transcend [ed] the maintenance of effective patterns of agriculture” (1964:234). In his functionalist/structuralist reckoning, various rituals essentially reaffirmed the social order. The succession of rites was designed to visually demonstrate the differing moral and social authority vested in various institutions and to express clearly the status they enjoyed relative to each other (ibid., p. 249). In this, Forde placed much importance on the fact that the spiritual forces that empowered the loosely aggregated associations lacked overall conceptual integration (ibid., p. 210).
Forde’s admirable assessment of the 1939 festival has little bearing on the yam festival of today. The council of elders continues to be politically viable because Nigeria’s federal administration officially recognizes it as the “traditional” government of the people and, more importantly, because socioeconomic facility still largely resides in clans with communal landownership. But all other associations that vied for power during the 1939 festival, where they survived, nowadays operate strictly as ceremonial organizations. In today’s Christian society, assessment of their status relative to each other based on a hierarchy that measures the efficaciousness of their tutelary spirits is no longer relevant. Forde listed all of the bina’s rites I describe above except Omileta and Okpebili’s last sacrifice. The chronology and timing of events relative to each other differs, but only slightly. Forde did not mention Etangala (the masquerade was incorporated into the festival in the early 1990s) or Libin. He paid no attention to women; his discussion of festival maidens’ performances is limited to a single reference to “Lite” dancers who moved in a parade from town hall to town hall (ibid., p. 246). Although Forde did not discern the festival’s warfare structure, he nevertheless described most of the components that constitute it; he mentions activation of the akota (ibid., p. 243), the dance with spears of Odjokobi (ibid., p. 244), the beating of the Ekoi drums, the Ekoi dance (ibid., p. 245), and the fertility rites facilitated by the head of the diviners.
There are a number of negligible differences between Forde’s 1939 account and my observations in 2001. These might represent minor modifications of the performance script over time, but they may also just reflect the specificity of particular performances. For example, in 1939, offerings at shrines included money, i.e. brass rods or hoe currency, which the chiefs rubbed over their own and participants’ chests before they deposited these items on the shrines. Also, in 1939, it was the messenger of the festival, not the town leader, who ritually cut firewood (ibid., p. 240). Then, Mangkepai took place three days before Oboku Pom, rather than immediately after it.
Other passages of Forde’s description indicate today’s near total loss of the rites’ spiritual significance. In 1939, initiating young men into a fertility spirit in preparation for Lobo/Yekpi took twenty diviners’ efforts throughout the night, even though participation then was restricted to members of the patrician of the head of the diviners (ibid., p. 247). In 2001, the same initiation, open to anyone, was performed by a single remaining diviner. Initiation procedure consisted of no more than a token gesture executed immediately before and even after commencement of the Lobo/ Yekpi ceremony.
Oboku Pom, which I described above as having lost its original meaning, today does little more than send the messenger of the festival spinning in circles around town. Six decades ago, the rite involved the manipulation of spiritual paraphernalia and substances whose powers were probably considered awesome (ibid., p. 240). Then, the messenger of the festival did not merely pass by the palace in order to be seen and to collect fines from interceptors. Rather, he gathered sacred items, one by one, from the Odjokobi and Obolene shrines to take them to the leader of the men’s initiation society.30 There, the two chiefs removed some of the Odjokobi materials and placed them inside the Leboku bundle, which the messenger of the festival then returned to the Obolene shrine. The messenger therefore would have moved by the palace three times. In the meantime, in keeping with today’s Oboku Pom ceremony, the leader of the women’s initiation society, Ekao, embarked on a procession followed by forty initiates. Decorated with camwood paste, these women engaged in empowering rites at a shrine in a forest grove (ibid., p. 241).
Only two aspects of Okoku Pom are still intact. The rite continues to link Korta, Ekao, Odjokobi, and Obolene; Obol Leboku still passes by the palace three times. But today there is no activation of ritual paraphernalia. The messenger’s purpose during Oboku Pom, as is true of all the other rites, is to jolt people out of their preoccupation with their modern strivings, to remind them of the indigenous culture’s core values, and to facilitate the experience of spontaneous communitas. From my experience, the bina’s simple yet majestic appearances invariably ignite a sense of pride in the people. Even the most avid adherents of Christianity cannot pull themselves away.
This emphasis on “presencing” ethnic identity did not yet exist during the height of the colonial age. In 1939, Forde remarks, affording bina respect so they could execute their rituals properly meant staying hidden indoors; the bina then fined anyone who caught a glimpse of their acts (ibid., p. 240). Whereas Yakurr people then were not allowed to witness any of the rites at all, today, I submit, the objective of the rituals is precisely to be seen. It is when people drop their activity to encircle the bina’s performances, when an audience member breaches the protocol and submits to paying a fine on the spot for everyone to witness, that Yakurr “traditions” are made visible and are validated.
ANALYSIS
A diachronic study of the Yakurr Leboku festival has revealed that the performance script of this Gesamtkunstwerk in terms of its formal aspects underwent minor modification between 1939 and 2001, but that the meaning attributed to performances has changed radically. The dramatic focus of religious rituals in 1939 resided in secret rites conducted at shrines. By 2001, the same rites had become theatrical performances that stressed highly visible processions centered on display of a constructed ethnic identity, and performers considered their impact on an international audience.31
The shift in emphasis from activity at shrines to movement between them is reminiscent of postmodernism’s privileging of the signifier over the signified (Derrida 1976). This assessment may appear incongruous, but, according to Anthony King, conditions that gave rise to postmodern tactics existed in the Third World before they manifested themselves in the West (1997:8), and according to Ruby Rich (1993), such postmodern strategies resemble those of Third World survival. The open-ended structure of the Leboku festival- a fictitious victorious war staged against an unspecified enemy who lends himself to multifarious inscription (surely a fight for continued existence) – overwhelmingly reinforces the Leboku drama’s contemporary postmodern logic. This suggests not only a capacity to contribute meaningfully to an intercultural aesthetic, but based on the people’s greater depth of experience with global forces, confers on the culture (at least from a gerontocratic perspective) a degree of authority.32
The sacrosanct principles Yakurr people proffer to a globalizing world are not easily encapsulated in words. They are embedded in intertwined narratives that juxtapose gender-specific attributes- women’s spirit-derived capacity to generate life and social order, men’s great physical strength and inclination to fiercely protect resources – in scenarios whose themes derive from “people who died in the family that time.” These relate that in the face of overpowering forces such as droughts, floods, epidemics, political enemies, etc., nothing is more important than people and the support they lend each other.
The essence of these values is embodied in specific performance modes, costumes, adornment, gestures, attitudes, and demeanor by people who, communally fashioned into works of art, subdue their personal desires in favor of expressing the community’s goals. Single-file processions by bina, representing various clans, underscore the unity and cooperation of lineages that extend back to primordial ancestors. The innately stronger women, as festival maidens, yield the majority of public attention to the men to maintain gender equality. In boosting the men’s importance, they help to project an image of a fierce society in which the warriors bear the brunt of violent confrontations. As the spectators toss money at the performers’ feet in appreciation, they emphasize that support derives from sharing resources. Yakurr people place a premium on equality, cooperation and generosity, and therein lies their plea to a global audience.
However, is kinship-based performance art reliant on culturespecific ritualized acts able to engender cross-cultural communication? Ethologists and neurologists have demonstrated that ritualized behavior, “overdetermined, full of redundancy, repetition, and exaggeration” (Schechner 1995:230), is hardwired into the cognitive function of the human brain where it evokes an instinctive response.” Thus, Cole observed, “The well-staged festival brings everyone into its ambiance” (1975:12) and Turner, that it facilitates a sense of spontaneous communitas that can send “a shiver running down the back” (1990:13). To Tambiah, in fact, the sacrosanct principles of a culture “cannot be recognized through any clearer medium than that of formalized gesture” (1979:125).
Since ritual is a tool of analysis reflective of nineteenth century conceptions of the modern age (Bell 1997:21), having been devised by “major shapers of the modern mind,” e.g. Freud and Frazer (Weisinger 1961:389), and since Yakurr rites in particular employ strategies that resemble those of postmodernism, why would Yakurr expressive culture not be accessible to Western minds? I have anyhow made the case that the Yakurr Leboku festival today largely functions as a theatrical drama, and “both Richard Schechner and [Victor Turner], approaching the issue from different directions, envision theater as an important means for intercultural transmission of painfully achieved modalities of experience” (Turner 1982:18). Assessing Yakurr culture’s intricacy and complexity requires no more intellectual preparation than comprehension of any other highly complex work of art. If Western scholarship dismisses kinship-based artistic genres’ outwardly focused potentiality, is it because the values these cultures promote threaten current geopolitical power dynamics? Because, as Brown points out (2003:3), ritual does not merely reflect cultural ideas, but as a dynamic process generates cultural values. 1 Omileta is the first rite of the season. Obol Okalefong (left), the leader, wears “traditional” dress. He is accompanied by two members of Ebilambi, a security force with origin in Agwagune (Akunakuna people) by the Cross River. The female diviner neutralizes juju or witchcraft that may have been laid in Obol Okalefong’s path. Ugep, July 1998.
2 Eti Kakomi. A palm wine tapper donates palm wine to Obol Leboku and thereby confirms his ward’s continued commitment to the rites. Although no viewers are visible in this photograph, people are in fact surrounding this event; they watch impatiently from afar and sigh with relief when a farmer finally approaches the priest-chief and saves the day. Ugep, July 14, 1999.
3 The lineup of the nine bina responsible for the festival during Leboku Kepili; the men are led by Okpebili. His spear renders the bina immune to danger. The bina are on their way to invoke the spiritual force of the sacred Leboku bundle, which resides in the Obolene shrine. “The belief is, the spirits will be woven all around the town,” explained Michael Obeten. Ugep, August 2001.
4 Okpebili (left) takes the Obol Leboku’s extended hands in his own, blows into their palms, and pushes them towards the chief’s heart. This exchange amounts to both a sign of respect from the one and a blessing from the other. The expectation that it momentarily transforms ordinary reality into a celebratory one renders it an epiphany. Ugep, August 8, 2001.
5 The bina fan out and subtly act as if they are scouting out enemies. Leboku Kepili sets in motion a symbolic, victorious war staged against an unspecified foe, who can be variously interpreted. This war constitutes the underlying structure of the Leboku festival. It allows the community to symbolically fend off external threats to its integrity as an indigenous society. Ugep, August 8, 2001.
6 Members of the Ekeledi Girls association stage dances wearing festival maidens’ attire. Numerous references to money (colonial coins, cowries, brass bangles) and difficult-to-obtain Items such as elephant tusk bracelets and horsetail flywhisks allude to a high standard of living. Ugep, July 18, 1998.
7 During Oboku Pom, Obol Leboku passes four formerly significant ritual sites, the Odjokobi and Obelene shrines near the palace, the Korta house, and the house of the late leader of a female initiation society, Ekao. People clear the road as the Obol Leboku approaches. By doing so, they act as active agents in the perpetuation of rites that no longer hold any religious significance. Ugep, August 17, 2001.
8 His Royal Highness the Obol Lopon of Ugep, Ubi Ujong lnah, cuts firewood during a rite called Mangkepai. This is the only time during the festival that the town leader appears in “traditional dress.” The firewood is used during a night ceremony, Okondel, for which a curfew is imposed on the town. It is during this nocturnal event that spirits are invited to join the living for the celebration of the arrival of new yams. Ugep, August 17, 2001.
9 During Ekpakeke, the festival’s drummers wear warriors’ attire. They collect and refurbish the Ekoi drums In preparation for the main celebrations. The men’s fiercely protective behavior toward the drums reenacts the fear that the original owners of the instruments, the former Inhabitants of the land, might return for them. Ugep, August 19, 2001.
10 Lekpedunga members carry their instruments of power during a procession accompanied by the eerie sounds of an ewonwong flute. The party is led by Obol Akekpe, the custodian of the “leopard voice.” Ugep, August 19. 2001.
11 Ekpongkara members reenact their society’s origin story, which is steeped In the cover-up of a murder. The name derives from a Lokeh phrase that means This world is frightening.’ Members of Ekpongkara, who number more than forty, represent all patricians except those of the two murder victims. Ekpongkara’s parent organization, Kekpan, in precolonial times constituted a powerful court. Here, Ekpongkara is performed during the Yose festival. Ugep, November 24, 2001.
12 Etangala’s netted suit is embellished with raffia and fleece. Associated with a society of rich men, Etangala has an enormous stomach said to contain a human skull. The mask can afford “to rub his tummy.” Freshly cut palm frond denotes the mask’s sacred nature. A head crest makes reference to a gorilla. Etangala is controlled by chains and staff bearers. Here, an elder cools the masker’s spirit by pouring water over his feet. Ugep, August 21 , 2001.
13 Festival Maidens stroll across the festival grounds as If they had nothing to do with the main event: the bina’s ceremonial entry into the arena (Ekoi Kemle) and the Ekoi war dance. The young, fertile maidens’ juxtaposition with the mature, accomplished men bespeaks an ideal union. Ugep, August 21, 2001.
14 Throughout the Ekoi dance, various bina ritually secure the arena. Obol Ebinyang (I), the head of a men’s initiation society (Korta) and host of the festival, holds a sword marked with a prayer for power, peace and fertility. During the event, his eyes encircled with yellow, empowering ejongo paste, he walks around with a talisman. The men’s chests are smeared with chalk. The particular marking indicates that sacrifices to the Leboku bundle preceded the public event. Ugep, August 21, 2001.
15 Ekoi Kemle, the bina’s ceremonial entry onto the festival grounds: The men carry their staffs of office, brooms, whose reeds signify ordinary people and whose handles indicate the men’s firm grip on power. On this occasion, the bina’s wrappers are knotted in the manner of Efik people in Calabar. Various combinations of red knitted chiefs’ caps, jute caps decorated w
Comments