Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ralph Njoku: West African Masking Traditions and Diaspora Masquerade Festivals

Sorry to say that I missed the reference to Nwando Achebe in my quick read but the author has kindly referred me to it:

"Colonialism, which accompanied Christian evangelical missions to Africa and the Americas, was the biggest force that unmasked the secrecy with which the masquerade cults operate. Nwando Achebe's biography of Ahebi Ugbabe, the prostitute turned female king of colonial Nigeria, provides the most pugnacious devaluation of the masquerade tradition in the then Enugu area of Igboland. Empowered by the colonial system, Ahebi founded her own "Ekpe Ahebi Masquerade" as a rival institution, to the outrage of the Enugu community. This development was a stark de lement of the age-honored tradition that excluded women from membership in masquerade cults."

I stand corrected, though Ahebi was called an 'astute business woman' by Nwando and not a 'prostitute' even if it was alleged by some oral informants as njakiri of the sort that refers to independent women who 'sleep around' without being married today as 'Okada', 'Danfo', or 'Karuwa' in Igbo, Yoruba, or Hausa areas.

Biko

On Friday, 29 May 2020, 18:35:01 GMT-4, 'Patrick Effiboley' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Thank you professor Ralph Njuko for this masterpiece. We will enjoy reading it.

PE

Dr Emery Patrick EFFIBOLEY

Assistant Professor, 

Department of History and Archaeology, University of Abomey-Calavi 

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand,Johannesburg,(2014-2016) 

www.researchgate.net/Profile/Emery_Effiboley

 

Le vendredi 29 mai 2020 à 21:42:28 UTC+1, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> a écrit :

Congratulations to Professor Ralph Njoku for his latest publication on masking traditions and masquerade festivals, an excellent book that appeared in the University of Rochester's Series on Africa and the African Diaspora.

 

Thanks to a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation, it is both an open access book and an inexpensive paper edition. If you are interested in a free copy, the links are supplied below. No code is necessary! It's completely open access.  An inexpensive paperback for sale will be coming out soon--for people who would still like to have a print book. 

 

You can find it here (the digital repository for University of Rochester research):

 

http://hdl.handle.net/1802/35708

 

or here, in a collection showing the other books published through the pilot:

https://archive.org/details/sustainablehistorymonographpilot

or here, on JSTOR:

 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv114c79k

West African Masking Traditions and Diaspora Masquerade Carnivals: History, Memory, and Transnationalism on JSTOR  In the decades following the 1940s, there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in African-styled traditions and the influence of these traditions upon th... www.jstor.org

 

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