The Aesthetics Of Performance In African Festivals: The Ọmabe Masquerade Example

Abstract

The cultural tradition of the Igbo heritage has been demonized and collectively labeled as a fetish or backward practice, allowing it to atrophy despite the rich artistic and aesthetic resources of the celebration, however, during all occasions when masquerades feature in Igbo land, whether ritual, religious, or ceremonial, they express the dominant aesthetic values of the entire community, which witnesses this most dramatic form of African artistic expression. This paper examines the dramatic, artistic, and dynamic aesthetic qualities recoverable in the context of the performance, not only of the masquerade displays, but also of other physical and symbolic actions and practices associated with the entire Ọmabe Obollo festival celebration. The aim is to reveal the innate artistic imagination of the Obollo people and their aesthetic experiences and preferences. In doing so, the study acknowledges the dominant Eurocentric notion driven by a Western epistemic framework that ‘inferiorizes’ the dramatic and artistic qualities of most traditional African cultural productions in comparison to their Western counterparts. The study employs the analytic framework of traditional African aesthetics to demonstrate that the Omabe festival and masquerade tradition of the Obollo people embody rich artistic and aesthetic qualities shaped by the community’s traditional aesthetic parameters. Within the historical and cultural context of the Obollo people, the study shows that the Omabe festival and masquerade performance illustrate the creation and perpetuation of meaning in the material existence of the people.