Urban Roots and Rural Routes: Migrating Masquerades of Freetown and Beyond

Abstract

For two decades, scholars have turned their attention toward contemporary urban expressions but have largely overlooked the masquerade arts of African cities, outside of their importation from rural, village contexts or as state-sponsored festivals. As such, there have been very few documented urban masquerading traditions in Africa and little discussion of their performance.This article considers the Ordehlay cultural societies of Freetown, Sierra Leone to explore the relationship of urban-invented arts and their spread to towns in the outlying rural areas of Sierra Leone. This is counterintuitive to the typical spread of masquerades, which, according to scholars, spreads from the rural into the urban zone. Further, while urban-based artists and members are interacting with communities upline—a substitute for “provincial” or anywhere outside of the capital city—they are also interacting with international branches of the societies. Both interactions are strengthened by the collapse of time and space characteristics of the techno-global landscape of contemporary Africa.The Freetown masks are used in the extreme political, economic, and cultural landscape of the city as a source of community-based sociocultural and financial support, and they also serve as a source of neighborhood pride. By tracing the migrations, articulations, and aesthetic shifts of Ordehlay masquerade devils from the originating confines of Freetown, this article argues that masquerades move not just in performative contexts, but as part of larger urbanization processes outside of the capital, thereby challenging conventional and historical notions of “urban” and “rural.” What work does the mask and its performance do within and without the city—and what does city even mean?