Bobo
The farmers and smiths of the Bobo-Dioulasso region — makers of leaf masks and towering butterfly masks that come out at the first rains, and holders of a village religion centred on Dwo, whose masks are the god's own body.
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Bobo people
Bobo-Fing mask (British Museum).jpg · Wikimedia Commons
Identity
Population: Around a million in western Burkina Faso and adjacent Mali
Location: The region around Bobo-Dioulasso, Houndé and the Mouhoun river
Language: Bobo (Bwamu is spoken by the neighbouring and often confused Bwa)
Language family: Niger-Congo → Mande (Bobo); the neighbouring Bwa speak a Gur language
Traditional governance: Village-level authority without chiefs in the usual sense: the earth priest, the Dwo cult officers and the elders of the founding lineages govern collectively.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups — clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes — each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Bobo Fing
The Bobo proper, Mande-speaking, of the Bobo-Dioulasso region.
Bwa (Bobo Oulé)
A distinct Gur-speaking people long confused with the Bobo in the literature; makers of the leaf and plank masks.
Smith lineages
Endogamous blacksmith families holding ritual as well as technical authority over masks and iron.
Gallery
2 images
Culture
Clothing: Handwoven cotton strips sewn into tunics and wrappers; indigo dyeing; mask costume of fibre and leaves entirely covering the wearer.
Food: Millet, sorghum and maize with baobab and okra sauces; dolo millet beer, brewed by women and central to every ceremony and work party.
Ceremonies: Mask performances at the start of the rains and at funerals; the leaf mask of the Bwa, made fresh each year and danced to purify the village; initiation cycles into the Dwo cult; harvest and sowing rites.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth in labour and grain; clan exogamy; the smith lineages marry among themselves.
Initiation rites: Long initiation into the Dwo cult in age classes, involving seclusion in the bush, instruction in the masks' meaning, and a symbolic death and rebirth.
Stories & Oral Literature
Dwo's BodyReligious tradition
Among the Bobo the masks are not representations of Dwo, the son of the creator god, but his physical presence in the village. They appear at the transitions of the agricultural year to renew the covenant between the village and the land. Because the mask is the god, it is made, kept and destroyed under strict ritual control by the smiths and cult officers.
The Leaf MaskPerformance
The Bwa leaf mask is built fresh from freshly cut vines and leaves for each performance and destroyed after: a mask with no permanent object, made of the bush itself. It dances to purify the village and to carry off pollution. Collectors cannot own it, which has kept it out of the market and inside its own community.
Proverbs
“The mask does not dance for itself.”
Ritual serves the village, not the performer.
“The smith's fire belongs to everyone and to no one.”
The smith's ambiguous, indispensable status.
“Beer brewed for the field is not drunk in the house.”
Collective work has collective rewards.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Wuro, the creator, made the world and withdrew; his son Dwo mediates between people and the divine and is present in the masks; other cults (Soxo of the bush, Kwere of thunder) handle particular domains.
Beliefs: Dwo cult with initiation grades; earth priests controlling land and sacrifice; Islam and Christianity present, particularly in the towns, alongside the village religion.
Ancestors: Founding lineages hold ritual authority; ancestors are honoured at village shrines and in funeral masking.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Wuro
The withdrawn creator
Dwo
Son of the creator, present in the masks, mediator with the village
Soxo and Kwere
Powers of the bush and of thunder, with their own cults and masks
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Compact villages of flat-roofed banco houses joined into blocks, with granaries and interior courtyards; Bobo-Dioulasso's great mud mosque nearby.
Building techniques: Banco mud construction with wooden beams and flat earth roofs; painted geometric wall decoration; granaries as separate sculpted forms.
Village layout: Compound of joined rooms around courtyards, granaries within; shrine sites and the mask house restricted; fields beyond the village.
Artifacts
Butterfly and plank masks
Performance
Large painted geometric masks danced at the first rains.
Leaf mask
Performance
Mask made fresh from bush vegetation and destroyed after use.
Bobo-Dioulasso grand mosque
Heritage site
Sudano-Sahelian mud mosque of the nineteenth century.
Strip-woven cotton
Textile
Narrow-band cloth sewn into garments and used as currency historically.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1500
Bobo and Bwa communities established in the western Volta basin.
1800s
Pressure from Fulani jihad states and from Samori Touré's campaigns.
1897–1916
French conquest; the Volta-Bani war of 1915–16 is among the largest anticolonial risings in West Africa.
1900s–present
Bobo-Dioulasso becomes Burkina Faso's second city and a centre of music and cinema.
Present
Mask traditions continue alongside Islam and Christianity; some masks enter the international art market.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Britannica: BoboEncyclopaedia Britannica
- African masking traditions — museum scholarshipThe Metropolitan Museum of Art
Premium & scholarly sources