African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 819
Frequently, initiations are ways of setting up boundary markers between genders, agegrades,
or classes. The solidarities and the divisions that secrecy creates between
members and non-members often hold more importance than the actual content of the
secrets themselves. Jan Vansina recounts, for example, that the secret of Kuba initiation
was that there was no secret (1973, 304). Yet dramatic tales of the ordeals to which
novices are submitted are a means of aggrandizing and mystifying male power through
the possession of “secrets” forbidden to women.
Secrecy and Gender
A language of secrecy often underlies gender dynamics. During Yoruba Gelede
masquerades, men personify women through mask performances and sing verses about
“our mothers, the witches, the nightbirds,” i n referen ce not on ly to the se powers of
women themselves, but to a more general conception of individuality that is based on
both exterior and interior aspects (Lawal 1996). All people are believed to have both an
outer head and an inner head, and as one Yoruba proverb states, “May my inner head not
spoil my outer one.” The true being, character, and intentions of a person are in constant
conflict with that person’s outward social persona. Women are perceived to be especially
capable of concealing their inner being with a composure and coolness that emanates
from their enhanced life force, and Yoruba men stress this distinction in the following
way: “Women are more secretive than we…. But we men usually open our secret to
anybody…. Women have many secrets they will never tell…except [to] their mothers”
(Drewal and Drewal 1983, 73).
In addition to the boundaries set by spoken language, secrecy may delimit space and
social difference through the sounds and silence of other-world beings (Peek 1994).
Initiation rites are often conducted outside of the view of women and noninitiates, but not
outside the range of their hearing. Auditory masks, spirit voices conveyed through
musical instruments such as bullroarers, and other aural signals may convey the presence
of the spirits to those who are excluded from the rites, or to initiates of lower ranks
(Lifschitz 1988). Likewise, silence is a powerful signifier of sacred or occult powers
(Peek 1994, 477–478). The space around a king, for example, may be rendered sacred by
the absence of verbal communication. Not only is a Benin king confined to the palace,
secluded from the public eye, but he is never heard to utter ordinary speech. The absence
of sound indicates the presence of the secret, erecting a boundary: “What is unknown
must be made present by an awareness of its absence” (Poppi 1993, 196–203).
Secrecy and Society
Through these dialectics of absence and presence, concealment and revelation, secrecy
structures the hierarchies that separate royals from nonroyals. In the Akan kingdom of
Akuapem, the king is accompanied by spokesmen, or counselors, who “mediate in all
verbal discourse with the king and protect him from danger and pollution. They are
visible metaphors of the invisible royal person” (Gilbert 1993, 134), and provide an
“extra authority of remoteness” for the king (Peek 1994, 477). Their emblems—gold-