On Masks and Audible Ghosts: Some Secret Male Cults in Central Nigeria1

Abstract

a voice disguiser. This cult is linked with a number of visible manifestations, called masquerades in Nigeria, which are conceptualised as wives or messengers of Abvwoi. I then discuss the extremely similar and perhaps related4 cult, Ku, found among a neighbouring people, the Ham. This too is manifested in disguised voices and various masquerades. The next sector of the paper describes four well documented cases of the adoption of new cults of this kind-either borrowed from neighboring peoples, or invented. Finally I consider what has happened to these cults in present-day Nigeria and what social functions, if any they filled. Their study, however, is fraught with many difficulties and I shall preface my account with a brief account of these, and of the ethnographic context in which the cults are found.

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