African Bamana Wood Kono Kun Mask, Heavily Encrusted Sacrificial Material

Africa, Mali, Bamana peoples. A Kono helmet mask carved from wood and heavily encrusted with sacrificial material. The hollowed helmet extends into two long, plank-like jaws, with horn-like projections at the upper end. An iron dish is set on the brow, and cordage lashes sections of the wood together beneath the encrustation. The form suggests a crocodile, though masks of this type combine features of several animals into a single composite figure. Kono kun masks were danced by the Kono power association, led by griots, to control antisocial behavior, and were kept in a shrine between performances. The mask is mounted on a display stand. Komo was one of the most powerful initiation societies among the Bamana (Bambara). Its senior members were blacksmiths, and its masks were kept from the eyes of non-initiates. Unlike the polished wooden masks of the public Ntomo or Ciwara performances, a Komo helmet was a deliberately unsettling thing. It mixed features of several animals (gaping jaws, horns, and sometimes quills, feathers, or tusks) and was coated again and again with substances meant to build up its nyama, the active force at the center of Bamana thought. The crust was the source of the mask's power, not decay on its surface, and some scholars hold that a mask's mounting crust measured how long and how actively it had been used. Item # 203723

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