Gule Wamkulu - Malawi

by Gloria Ssali

Title

Gule Wamkulu - Malawi

Artist

Gloria Ssali

Medium

Drawing - Drawing

Description

Nyau (also: Nyao meaning mask[1] or initiation) is a secret society of the Chewa, a tribe of the Bantu peoples from Central and Southern Africa.[2] The society consists solely of men who have to be initiated to be a part of the Nyau. The word Nyau is not only used for the society itself, but also for the men who form this society, their ritual dance, and their masks and animal structures used for the dances. Nyau societies operate at the village level, but women and children are not supposed to have any knowledge of Nyau and often rush into the houses when a Nyau performance is put on.[3][4] Increasing westernization has led to a decrease in Nyau.

They are said to live alone, and no one knows for sure who they are.They dress in masks and the skins of animals, and when they dance they kick up the dust in order to help disguise themselves. Only the chief who appointed them, as guardians of the village, know who they are, and they have the responsibility of driving away evil spirits from the village.
It seems that nearly everyone you talk with about the gule will give you a somewhat different story about them. One thing is sure. They are surrounded by mystery and intrigue.
Performed by the Chewa secret societies, the Gule Wamkulu (or "Great Dance") is a masked dance which takes place at male initiation ceremonies, funerals, and major local and national celebrations. The dance is symbolic as a medium between the ancestral world of spirits and the mundane present. The Gule Wamkulu symbolizes the spectrum of life’s emotions and actions.
The Gule Wamkulu is performed at the request of the village headman on the occasion of funerals of village members, puberty initiations, and the installation of chiefs, and is part of the legacy of royal ritual inherited from the Chewa past.

Nyau dances involve intricate footwork coupled with waist-wriggling. The dancers, described as "fleet-footed or nimble-footed", appear in scary masks representing a human being or animal; the weak-kneed run away from sights of such dances.[13] While it may be considered in many places to be a folk dance, this is certainly not the case; Nyau should rather be considered a religious dance, as its function is to communicate with the ancestral world.
Since 2005, Gule Wamkulu has been classified as one of the 90 Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, a program by UNESCO for preservation of intangible cultural heritage. This dance form may date to the great Chewa Empire of the 17th century. Gule Wamkulu, or big dance, is the best-known and longest dance of the Nyau. It is also known as pemphero lathu lalikulu la mizimu ("great prayer to our ancestors") or gulu la anamwaliri ("dance of the ancestors"). Prior to the Gule Wamkulu dance, Nyau dancers observe a series of secret rituals which are associated with their society, a secret brotherhood.The dance is mainly performed at funerals and memorial services but also at initiations and other celebrations. The masks worn by the dancers on such performances are in the form of animals or "beasts". The purpose is said to be a way of communicating messages of the ancestors to the villagers. Since it is also adopted to scare people to extract money, it has been used as a connotation to describe the dancers: "He dumped the whole Christian thing these days, he's gone back to his roots and joined Nyau" or "Behave yourself, stop acting like a Nyau".

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February 6th, 2012

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