Gule Wamkulu Mask
The gule wamkulu masks of the Chewa of Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique are carved wooden face masks worn by the dancers of the Nyau society, whose great dance of the same name is performed at initiations, funerals, and the memorials of the dead. Nyau means 'the big dance' or 'the dance of the spirits', and the masked dancers embody the ancestors, the animals of the bush, and the forces of the forest, revealing their meanings only to initiates. Each mask has a name and a character, the gentle, the comic, the terrible, and the dancer becomes the spirit while he wears it, speaking in its voice. Th