[Music]
today we're gonna talk about
masks and masquerades yeah so if you
have interest in african arts then you
probably have a mask
of your mask hanging on your wall but
the question is
what are masks are they just expressions
of
arts or are they more to them
so in this video we're going to explore
a bit about that and
i will talk a bit about african
spirituality
because that is one aspect of the
african way of life that has
been infused into everything we do
whether it's
architecture or dressing or dances or
you know just about everything we do
with infused with
some section of the african spirituality
so the thing is the practice of african
spirituality helps
us connect with the divine through
places or people or things
or practices and i'll give you a few
examples about this
when a person is born with dreadlocks
in many african cultures they believe
this person has been touched
by the divine and is extremely
gifted and something or would have a
very
important task to perform during the
course of their life
so people who have dreadlocks are
considered special
and are treated as such unfortunately
when we became christians we
started seeing people with dreadlocks as
costs uh
satanic as diabolical and every efforts
must be made
to read them of the spirit of dreads
that have possessed them
it's just hair man masks
so these are items that are usually
carved out of wood but could also be
made out of
metal or just about any all the material
because what makes the mask
is oftentimes not the material with
which it
is made but the significance that
it holds so the significance each mass
holds depends on the reason why it was
made
and so we're going to look at some of
the reasons why
masks are made and number one and very
shocking
maybe some people would be that mass are
not
satanic symbols but are actually
learning aids
and i'll show you an example using a
mask that i have in my home
so if you look closely at this mask you
would realize that this has
a very prominent figure here which is
the face of a man
and you can tell he's a very wealthy man
from all the jewelries that he has
on his neck and from the cap on his head
this man
is a chief yeah so let's call him
mario kuru now marzio curry is a very
important
fellow but when you look very closely at
him you realize that his eyes are down
casts
and his leaves are pouty now what
expressions come to mind when someone's
eye is a bound cast and leaves a party
he's unhappy yeah marzio curry despite
being a very rich man he's also a very
unhappy man and all the wealth that he's
acquired in his lifetime has been unable
to make him happy
and so marzi is on a journey to find
true
happiness and he would say to himself
how about
if i took a wife maybe she would make me
a happy man and so he found
this beautiful lady let's go her name
nia and he got married to her
and for period he was happy but after a
little while the
happiness faded and marzio koro would
become an unhappy man once again
and then he started his journey all over
again
in search for the next big thing in his
life that would make him really happy
and then
he found this other lady let's call her
neckar
so go into a relationship with her and
they would eventually get married
so marzio koro has two wives nene
and neka but with these two ladies he
was happy for a while
but after bt got bored again and became
unhappy and
marzio curry is wondering what next he
should do
to improve the joy in his life
and then he got a mistress you go into a
relationship
uh with this lady let's call her adaku
so maz yoko is in a relationship with a
darker despite having two wives
who are anemia and neca right
and he's considering bringing a darker
home and make her a wife
if you look very closely here you'd see
there's a figure of a face in his head
so he's still contemplating it he isn't
married to an odd woman yet
but he definitely would but then if you
have followed the story up to this point
then it would be very
easy for you to imagine that even if he
married a darko
he would still come back to a point
where he is unhappy
so what lessons you draw from this mask
or from the story of this mask that
number one
despite how much wealth you acquire in
your lifetime
you probably won't be happy and that
no matter how many people you surround
yourself with you still won't find
happiness and finally that
happiness does not come from the outside
what can only come truly from
discovering
yourself from the inside
[Music]
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