BAULE PEOPLE: THE ARTISTIC AKAN TRIBE IN IVORY COAST
The Baule (Baoule or Bawule) people is one of the largest ethnic group in the Côte d'Ivoire. They have played a central role in twentieth-century history of the country. They waged the longest war of resistance to French colonization of any West African people, and maintained their traditional objects and beliefs longer than many groups in such constant contact with European administrators, traders, and missionaries.
The Baule belong to the Akan peoples who inhabit Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. According to a legend, during the eighteenth century, the queen, Abla Poku and her factions after having a serious disagreement with their Ashanti king had to lead her people west to the shores of the Comoe, the land of Senufo. In order to cross the river, she sacrificed her own son. This sacrifice was the origin of the name Baule, for baouli means “the child has died.”
They displaced and intermarried with the Senufu of the north and Guru people of the west. They came to dominate southern Ivory Coast. Poku died in 1760 and was burried in her capital, the town of Warebo, close to Bouake. Queen Akwa Boni, niece of Poku, inherited the throne. Her people became known as the Baoule and took over the gold mines west of the Bandama River. At the death of Queen Akwa, the kingdom plunged into dynastic disputes among the major family heads. The kingdom never achieved great unity, as the Empire of Asante. It was conquered by the French in the latter half of the 1800s.
Now about one million Baule occupy a part of the eastern Côte d'Ivoire between the Komoé and Bandama rivers that is both forest and savanna land. Baule society was characterized by extreme individualism, great tolerance, a deep aversion toward rigid political structures, and a lack of age classes, initiation, circumcision, priests, secret societies, or associations with hierarchical levels. Each village was independent from the others and made its own decisions under the presiding presence of a council of elders. Everyone participated in discussions, including slaves. It was an egalitarian society. The Baule compact villages are divided into wards, or quarters, and subdivided into family compounds of rectangular dwellings arranged around a courtyard; the compounds are usually aligned on either side of the main village street.
The Baule are agriculturists; yams and maize are the staples, supplemented by fish and game; coffee, cocoa and kola nuts are major cash crops. The importance of the yam is demonstrated in an annual harvest festival in which the first yam is symbolically offered to the ancestors, whose worship is a prominent aspect of Baule religion.
Ancestors are the object of worship but are not depicted. The foundation of Baule social and political institutions is the matrilineal lineage; each lineage has ceremonial stools that embody ancestral spirits. Paternal descent is recognized, however, and certain spiritual and personal qualities are believed to be inherited through it. The Baule believe in an intangible and inaccessible creator god, Nyamien. Asie, the god of the earth, controls humans and animals. The spirits, or amuen, are endowed with supernatural powers. Religion is founded upon the idea of the immortality of the soul.
Like several other groups with Akan origin, Baoulé children are often named according to the day of the week or the circumstances under which they were born. For example, a male born on a Monday would be named Kouassi. However, there are slight variations in the spelling and pronunciation specific to the Baoulé. It should also be noted that the Baoulé have a calendar that is different from the Akan calendar of other Akan subgroups.
This may be due to the circumstances of their departure from Akanland and the need for them to mark a separation with the Ashanti Kingdom. For Akan subgroups such as the Ashanti, Abron, N'zima, Koffi may be a name for a boy child born on Friday. For the Baoulé, Koffi and Affoué are names for Saturday, the day being Foué. There is, therefore, a sound common to the day and the names.
| Day born | Variants | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Djole (Monday) | Kouadjo, Adjoua | The name of the day is Djole |
| Mlan(Tuesday) | Konan, Amlan | The name of the day is Mlan |
| Ouwe (Wednesday) | Kouakou, Ahou | The name of the day is Ouwe |
| Yah (Thursday) | Yao, Aya | The name of the day is Yah |
| Foue (Friday) | Koffi, Affoué | The name of the day is Foue |
| Monnin (Saturday) | Kouame, Amoin | The name of the day is Monnin |
| Kissie(Sunday) | Kouassi,Akissi | The name of the day is Kissie |
Baule art is sophisticated and stylistically diverse. Non-inherited, the sculptor’s profession is the result of a personal choice. The Baule have types of sculpture that none of the other Akan peoples possess. Wooden sculptures and masks allow a closer contact with the supernatural world.
Baule motherwood statue
Baule statues are usually standing on a base with legs slightly bent, with their hands resting on their abdomen in a gesture of peace, and their elongated necks supporting a face with typically raised scarification and bulging eyes. The coiffure is always very detailed and is usually divided into plaits. Baule figures answer to two types of devotion: one depicts the “spiritual” spouse who, in order to be appeased, requires the creation of a shrine in the personal hut of the individual. A man will own his spouse, the blolo bian, and a woman her spouse, the blolo bla.
Male Baule tribe figure seated on an Akan type chair wearing an elaborate hat. One hand on the knee, the other with the palm above. This type of Baule statues is often called asie usu representing a spirit of the Forest reincarnated in a beautiful male figure in this case probably a village chief.
The Baule believe that before they were born into the world they existed in a spirit world, where each one had a mate. Sometimes that spirit mate becomes jealous of their earthly mate and causes marital discord. When this happens, a figure depicting the other world spouse is carved and placated with earthly signs of attention.
Gyaman Adekye (chiefs) from Baule tribe of Ivory Coast
Baule Gyaman girls in exquisite gold jewelry with horsetail switches
Sources differ on its role or function: some say it intervenes in the ritual of divination, others that it is a protection against sorcerers, or a protective divinity of agrarian rites, or a bush spirit. The figures and human masks are elegant -- well polished, with elaborate hairdressings and scarification.
Blolo Bla Female Figure, Baule Culture (wood)
Masks correspond to several types of dances: the gba gba, the bonu amuen, the mblo and the goli. They never represent the ancestors and are always worn by men. The gba gba is used at the funerals of women during the harvest season. It celebrates beauty and age, hence its refined features. The double mask represents the marriage of the sun and the moon or twins, whose birth is always a good sign. The bonu amuen protects the village from external threats; it obliges the woman to a certain discipline; and it appears at the commemorations of death of notables. When they intervene in the life of the community, they take the shape of a wooden helmet that represents a buffalo or antelope and which is worn with a raffia costume and metal ankle bracelets; the muzzle has teeth, which incarnate the fierce animal that is to defend the group.
There is also a Kple Kple mask from the Baoule community in Ivory Coast.The face refers to the sun, and the sunbeams are represented by polychromed triangles.This type of mask is usually used in commemorative, agricultural and burial ceremonies. The mask would generally be worn with a raffia (grass) costume attached to the lower section of the mask reaching to below the waist with a grass skirt and other grasses covering the body and legs.
Mblo is the name of a performance category that uses face masks in skits and solo dances. Mblo masks, used in entertainment dances are one of the oldest of Baule art forms. These refined human face masks are usually portraits of particular known individuals. Mblo masks embody the core Baule sculpture style manifested in figures and decorated objects – spoons, combs, pulleys and the like.
Mblo Twin Mask. Côte d'Ivoire; Baule people
Lustrous curving surfaces, suggesting clean, healthy, well-fed skin, are set off by delicately textured zones representing coiffures, scarifications, and other ornaments. The idealized faces are introspective, with the high foreheads and the large downcast eyes. Ornaments above the face – birds, combs, horns, faces, and other decorative motifs – are chosen for their beauty, and have no iconographic significance. Fine scarifications and coiffures denote personal beauty, refinement and a desire to give pleasure to others.
Goli is the day-long spectacle that normally involves the whole village and includes the appearance of four pairs of masks, music played on special instruments, and, ideally, the joyous consumption of a great deal of palm wine. Goli can be performed both as an entertainment and for the funeral of important men. The very characteristic, round-shaped “lunar” goli is surmounted by two horns. It was borrowed from the Wan for a celebration adopted by the Baule after 1900.
circa 1889
Celebrating peace and joy, they would sing, dance, and drink palm wine. In the procession, the goli preceded the four groups of dancers, representing young adolescents. The goli would be used on the occasion of the new harvest, the visit of dignitaries, or at the funerals of notables. Boxes for the mouse oracle (in which sticks are disturbed by a live mouse, to give the augury) are unique to the Baule, whose carvers also produce heddle pulleys, combs, hairpins, and gong mallets.
Baules are also very sociable like their Ghanaian Akan brethrens. They welcome all blacks from the diaspora into their country without slightest mistrust. As a result black celebrities like the late king of Pop music Michael Jackson and rapper cum movie star LL Cool J have all been welcomed there and were installed as chiefs.
After a concert in the city of Abidjan Ivory Coast, the twenty-year-old LL Cool J travelled to the coastal village of Grand-Bassam where the local folks anointed his head with oil and dubbed him Chief Kwasi Achi-Bru. Upon his return to America, Chief Kwasi recorded “Def Jam In The Motherland.”
Baule chiefs
Origin: Baule- Ivory Coast- Africa
Circa: 1800 AD to 1900 AD
Baule portrait mask details the physical facial features namely eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth and eyes. In addition, the coiffure, beard, and facial scarification compliment the physical beauty. The scars found around the eyes and mouth indicates human scarification during rites of passage into adulthood. The beard Indicates that the person is an elder, someone who has created a family, lived a full life and one who deserves respect that comes with age and wisdom.This lost wax cast of a copper alloy mask (bronze or brass) comes from the Baule people of the Ivory Coast in West Africa. Though masks are not normally used by the greater number of Akan peoples including the Asante or Fante, they are often found attached to various chiefly regalia prominent on sword sheaths or chiefly stools. They are said to represent the heads of defeated enemies and are shown with some evidence of local scarification which is rare among the Akan but often shown on terracotta sculptures. - (DA.462)
Baule chiefs, Bebakoi,Cote d`Ivoire
Akan (Baule) knife and sheath
(Repro ID: © National Maritime Museum)
Akan knife and sheath. The sheath has a shell and a lead model of human teeth attached to it. The red-dyed shell is characteristic of Baule culture (from the Ivory Coast), while the human jaw is more typical of the Akan people (from present-day Ghana) and suggests a trophy attached to the knife to indicate the power of its owner. Before European contact, Akan peoples had migrated into Baule territory and there were extensive trade connections between the Akan and the Baule. It is likely that this knife and sheath are the result of cultural interactions: either the knife was purchased by Akan traders from the Baule who then added the jaw, or the Akan had influenced the Baule in the making of this artefact.
Gyamanhene of Ivory Coast (Baule chief) with exquisite crown of gold
Elephant Mask, Baule Culture, from Ivory Coast, late 19th-early 20th century (wood with pigment)
Baule Dancers
Ivory Coast museum mourns loss of looted artifacts
Bullet holes pock the vault door and empty display boxes litter the showroom floor of Abidjan’s Museum of Civilization, robbed of 100 ancient artifacts under the cover of deadly conflict in April.
“A piece of our history has been wiped out,” museum director Silvie Memel Kassi said of the collection’s lost crown jewels, some dating back to the 17th century, that may now be melted for the gold.
“It is a huge loss,” she said.
Worth an estimated 3 billion CFA francs (US$6.5 million), but irreplaceable, the looters made off with masks, sabers, crowns and gold-handled fly swatters — objects described by the museum as “authentic, unique and rare.”
“I had dreamed of leaving a museum of reference for future generations,” Zoko Djowa, the museum’s curator for the past 30 years and just months from retirement, said bitterly as he walked around the devastation.
Opened by the then-French administration in a white, colonial-style building in 1942, the museum could not have been worse placed during the conflict that engulfed Ivory Coast’s economic capital after a disputed election in November last year.
A man touches a statue of a Baule dancer at the Museum of Civilization in Abidjan on Aug. 12.
Photo: AFP
In Plateau, the neighborhood housing the presidential palace, the building also borders Camp Gallieni army headquarters and came under fire from both sides to the four-month conflict.
Fighting ended on April 11 with the arrest of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, who sparked the conflict by refusing to concede defeat to now-President Alassane Ouattara.
Shelling left a large hole in the museum facade.
Inside, the shattered state of the exhibition hall would break the heart of any art lover hoping to see the once rich collection of artifacts telling the story of the peoples of Ivory Coast.
Bullet marks have been left on the double glass that used to enclose sabers used by the royal Agni people from the east of the country.
Baule gbagba dancers
Glass display boxes lie strewn on the floor, empty.
In the middle of the room; the massive, hundred-year-old skeleton of an elephant — the national emblem — towers over the few masks and statuettes left of the once proud collection.
Among the items lost: pendants worn by the central Baule people in the seventeenth century, statuettes of the western We and northern Senufo tribes, crowns and fly swatters with solid gold handles from the central and coastal regions, and sacred masks from the Dan people in the west.
While the pillagers failed to reach most of the estimated 11,000 items locked up in vaults, they did make off with the museum’s flagship collection.
“All of Ivory Coast” was exhibited there, Memel Kassi said in her small office, surrounded by traditional masks.
Each of the stolen objects “taught us something about its culture, its civilization, its beliefs,” she said.
Without holding out much hope, the museum has issued a search notice for the plundered items through the cross-border policing organization Interpol and urged the public to help.
However, chances of recovering the items are slim, said Jules-Evariste Toa, a communication professor at the University of Abidjan.
“One can melt the gold or start a private collection. We fear never to see the items again,” the once-regular museum visitor said.
Now closed to the public, the museum — which has seen its visitor numbers dwindle in recent years — will have to stretch its meager 76,000 euro (US$109,000) budget to cover vital refurbishment and security improvements.
“We need an alarm system and weapons,” museum security guard Jean-Claude Agniman said.
However, by far the worst consequence of the looting, Ivorians say, is the loss of patrimony invaluable to helping forge a common national identity as the nation embarks on reconstruction after a decade of crises and tensions.
“Ivory Coast is losing its points of reference with the disappearance of these pieces,” said Ivorian poet and writer Paul Ahizi, describing the theft as “a desecration of the spirit of [our] ancestors.”
“The country will have a problem defining its own identity and spirituality,” he said.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! – the global authority on the weird, strange and bizarre – is taking the Fertility Statues out on tour again. Two authentic African fertility statues, which 2,500 women believe may have helped them become pregnant, will be in display in the lobby of our Orlando Believe It or Not! museum, FREE OF CHARGE!
THE STATUES WILL REMAIN IN ORLANDO UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE SO THE NEXT TIME YOU ARE IN THE SUNSHINE STATE STOP BY AND SEE WHAT ALL THE FUSS IS ABOUT.
A LITTLE HISTORY
Male Fertility Statue
The statues, representing a king and queen, came from the Ivory Coast of Africa, where they were carved in the 1930s by Baule tribesmen. The king holds a sword and a mango, and the queen holds an infant. The is considered a fertility symbol in parts of Africa. According to legend, the statues are to be placed outside a bedroom door, and couples wishing to conceive should touch them as they enter the room.
Following a three-year world tour in the late 90s, the company received more than 2,000 letters from women who had become pregnant shortly after touching the statues – even though many had been told by doctors they would never conceive.
Female Fertility Statue
“We are not making any claims for the statues, but it is amazing just how many women have told us they became pregnant after touching them, even though some of them had been told they would never give birth.”
Anyone who fancies what could be the cheapest fertility treatment in the world is welcome to come and try their luck at Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
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