Incremental Shifts: The Contemporariness of Masquerade

Scholars of African art history are familiar with the value of revisiting existing research. Such reexaminations can offer new perspectives, employ updated methodologies, and reassess entrenched ideas. Returning to artists and communities ten, twenty, or sixty years after an initial analysis invites researchers to recognize distinct, or even sweeping, shifts to artistic production and the ideas it involves.¹ Alternatively, my recent research shows that consistent fieldwork makes it possible to identify and analyze some of the numerous, seemingly minor decisions that generate the arts, specifically masquerade, over time. Given the collaborative nature of masquerade, organizers, patrons, and audiences negotiate what forms and practices are desirable and/or acceptable. As a result, refinements, reversals, and variances emerge and can (but don't always) accumulate enough to become conspicuous innovations to forms and practices. Noting a single instance of an unconventional masquerade form or practice can be edifying for the researcher. However, because...