My introduction to the art of Sierra Leone went something like this: Despite the overwhelming presence of African headpieces in the worlds' museums, the masquerade tradition is not widespread across the continent. Of the limited regions in Africa where performances requiring wooden mask headpieces were and are practiced, it is generally a performance of men. Only in West Africa does a different tradition of masked dance take place, where women in Sierra Leone and Liberia are the primary singers and dancers in masquerade as well as the wearers and commissioners of their sculpted wooden masks (Phillips 1978: 265; Boone 1986; Lamp 2014). Among the Mende, Temne, and their neighbors, adults belong to organized societies—the Poro for men and the Sande (Bondo) for women—both of which serve as powerful political, social, and family entities.1 The Sande society organizes and hosts the women's masked performances, which are...

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