Gonde
Gonde is the clown of the Mende women's Sande society, the only major African masking tradition in which women themselves dance the masks. Where the sowei masker embodies the society's water spirit in perfect composure and glossy black beauty, Gonde appears in a cast-off or damaged mask and tattered costume, dances badly on purpose, begs from spectators, and jokes with the crowd. Ruth Phillips and Sylvia Boone both document Gonde as a named, recurring character of Sande performance whose licensed misbehaviour throws the ideals of the sowei into relief, and who comforts and entertains the girls undergoing initiation. Gonde thus functions as the institutionalized anti-ideal of Sande aesthetics, inseparable from, yet always subordinate to, the spirit she parodies.
Domains
- humor and parody
- female initiation
Powers
- to parody the beauty and dignity of the sowei through clumsy dancing, begging, and comic misbehaviour
- to amuse and console Sande initiates during the hardships of their seclusion and training
Relations
- subordinate to: Sande Water SpiritGonde is the comic counterpart and foil of the sowei (Sowo), the dignified Sande water-spirit masquerade; she accompanies the sowei's appearances and derives her identity from parodying her superior.Sylvia Ardyn Boone, Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art, Yale University Press, 1986 (secondary)
Sources
- Gonde is the comic female masquerade spirit of the Mende Sande society, danced in an old or degraded sowei mask and ragged dress as the clownish inversion of the ideal beauty embodied by the sowei.: Ruth B. Phillips, Representing Woman: Sande Masquerades of the Mende of Sierra Leone, UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995 (secondary); Sylvia Ardyn Boone, Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art, Yale University Press, 1986 (secondary)