African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African folklore 472
In other respects, popular artists sing, dance, and picture Mami Wata in her various
aspects, recounting her evolution simultaneously. In popular culture, the Mami Wata icon
is read like a social fresco revealed through a pictorial narration. Her representation as a
woman with a fish tail appeared around the end of colonization; she has been taking on,
year after year, the appearance of a light-skinned siren with long hair and now appears in
modern fashions (jewels, wrist-watch, earrings, and so on) (Jewsiewicki 1991, 130–51).
Mami Wata become a combined reproduction of movie stars and advertisement bill
postings that were newly offered to the urban African public after World War II. Indeed,
often she is resting under the sun on an island or at the river bank. Her representation
fluctuates according to the demands of the market; pictorial narrative follows the trends
and impulses of social and political movements. When the economic and political
situation reaches a crisis stage, Mami Wata reverts to a mythical being. She is painted in
a serpent shape, copulating with a rich, naked female spinster, only to vomit money after
fleshly satisfaction. The revelation of the secret by the human lover of the beautiful
woman is punished by death. This vigorous return to the sacred, and its ascendancy over
social belief as a means of mastering crisis, was restored after this icon underwent
extensive reconsideration in better times, approximately 1974–1981 (Jewsiewicki 1995).
Mami Wata, beneath all the layers of metamorphosis, summarizes the difficulties
faced daily by Central African peoples, both under colonization and in postcolonial
societies, where state violence has become the only visible manifestation of power. She
also denounces the presence of a wealthy elite. Paradoxically, the political bourgeoisie
also has recourse to Mami Wata and her witchcraft practices, through ideologies and
mystic procedures that manipulate the major symbols of ancient and modern political
power to maintain and reinforce their ascendancy over the common people. The example
of presidents Mobutu and Sassou Ngessou, with their political classes calling on Mami
Wata as an image of the sacred, of power, and of access to wealth (Ndaywell 1993)
illustrates the essential ambiguity and ambivalence of Mami Wata, whose infinite use and
interpretations show that she is, above all, a polysemic metaphor and that she is open to
infinite interpretations (Rush 1992, 60). Mami Wata appears as a cultural potentiality,
which Central African societies with oral cultures posses manipulate as they “write” their
history.
References
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