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Names & Creature Profile

A likishi is a character made present through mask and costume; makishi is the plural. In Victoria Phiri Chitungu’s account, the presences are ancestors returning from the world of the dead. Their arrival belongs to social relations: they protect and guide the initiates, then take part in the public climax of their return. The mask’s identity therefore includes what it does among people. [1]

There is room for very different temperaments within that plural. Silva discusses Jordán’s grouping of sociable, ambiguous, aggressive and royal characters. The classification draws attention to differences of conduct as well as faces. A graceful female character and a threatening guardian are recognizable presences with particular tasks; a list of identical ancestral ghosts would lose the drama. [2]

Homeland & Tradition

UNESCO locates its Zambian account among the Vaka Chiyama Cha Mukwamayi communities, including Luvale, Chokwe, Luchazi and Mbunda people in the northwestern and western provinces. These names identify the communities behind the public masquerade. The ceremony brings a community together rather than placing a solitary spirit in an otherwise empty landscape. [7]

The traditions extend beyond a single national outline. The Fowler’s 2007 exhibition identified a Three Corners region spanning northwestern Zambia, northeastern Angola and southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its twenty-four collection masks were presented with these related peoples in view. That geography makes a Zambian focus precise while allowing neighbouring histories to remain visible. [11]

Historical Record

In the independence year of 1964, Makishi masks appeared in a Lusaka exhibition of Zambian culture. Friday Mufuzi describes them among musical instruments, carvings, beadwork and other cultural objects collected largely through the Livingstone Museum. Foreign guests arriving for independence celebrations encountered a national presentation in which local artistry had a conspicuous place. [9]

The museum’s own research changed as well. Mufuzi records Kafungulwa Mubitana’s appointment in ethnography in 1965 and Maud Muntemba’s in history in 1967. Those named researchers matter to the longer history of display: Zambian culture was increasingly studied and presented by Zambian staff. The masks’ movement into a gallery could form part of a deliberate reshaping of national memory. [9]

A new Ethnography and Art Gallery placed masks and costumes alongside other aspects of material and spiritual life. Mufuzi describes a shift toward a cross-cultural presentation from earlier displays arranged around separate ethnic categories. The change made connections across the country more visible. It also gave objects another framework: the ancestral character could enter a story about the nation’s arts and history. [9]

Appearance & Signs

Two public objects show how far appearances can differ. The Smithsonian’s Chikunza has a towering tapered cone above a small dark face, white raised lines and rings, and a dense orange-brown fiber ruff. Its tall silhouette is immediately striking. The museum explains the elongated head through an association with a similarly headed grasshopper. [6]

The Met’s Sachihongo carving concentrates force in a rounded face: curved ridges frame narrow eyes, the cheeks project, and a square open mouth displays pointed teeth. LaGamma’s essay places it within a Mbunda sculptural tradition shaped partly by neighbouring Chokwe artistry. The surviving face belongs to an ensemble whose missing costume once extended its presence beyond the carved head. [4]

Nature & Powers

Sachihongo’s force belongs to an ancestral hunter. LaGamma describes a rapid-tempo dance, with bow and arrow and sometimes a flywhisk or ceremonial axe. Chief and diviner are also possible forms of address. The figure’s authority draws on hunting, seniority and supernatural standing; the tense face does more than express a general wish to frighten. [4]

Mwana Pwo gives presence another rhythm. In Aaron Samuel Mulenga’s account, the young woman character initiates songs, guides accompanying drummers and addresses the public through gestures and implements. Grace includes assertiveness. The female ancestor’s social importance emerges through decisions in performance, making movement and direction as significant as the attractive face. [5]

Tales & Encounters

The public return at the end of mukanda gathers dance, pantomime and the reappearance of graduates into one occasion. UNESCO describes the village attending as the separated young people return to adult membership. Ancestors and living participants are connected in an event with a consequential ending: families receive people whose place in the community has changed. [7]

Another story follows a mask into collection. Robert and Ninette Reis recalled approaching the Zambian National Dance Troupe’s Lusaka office in 1971 or 1972. Robert wanted to read about a dance he had seen in Livingstone, then asked who made the troupe’s masks. A clerk arranged a meeting; the artist agreed to make several masks for the couple, including the Chikunza now at the Smithsonian. The record preserves a commission and encounter without supplying the maker’s name. [6]

The public calendar also includes Likumbi Lya Mize. The Zambia Tourism Agency describes this Luvale celebration on both sides of the Zambezi, customarily on the last weekend of August. Makishi are displayed there as a prominent part of the ceremony. The river setting supplies a particular gathering place and occasion for the ancestral characters’ public appearance. [10]

Landscape & Associations

Country, movement and sound remain connected even when an object travels. The Zambezi gathering gives the characters a shared public setting; the commissioned Chikunza’s later museum home preserves a headpiece from another encounter. Following those distinct paths lets a river celebration and a Lusaka commission illuminate different parts of the tradition’s life. Neither path needs to stand for every performance. [10][6]

In Chitungu’s Livingstone research, urban space changed the conditions of the ceremony. Communities sought seclusion near families while town growth reduced available places. Her account also records changing costume materials and music. Those practical pressures make the landscape consequential: distance, resources and an audience’s daily life can alter the conditions under which ancestral characters appear. [1]

Variants & Kindred Beings

Pwevo and Mwana Pwevo are not the whole female repertoire. Silva’s discussion also names Chiwigi, the vain woman, and Kashinakaji, the old woman. The characters differ in age, manner and social suggestion. The same review cautions that intermarriage and shared villages complicate neat equations between one mask, one ethnicity and one territory. Recognizable types live within relationships that cross such lines. [2]

Mulenga’s Chokwe account links Mwana Pwo with the importance of mothers to the initiates’ well-being. A male performer gives the female ancestor her public presence in these mukanda events. The represented woman and the person performing her belong to different roles, while costume, movement and music bring them together. This specific Chokwe interpretation adds depth without turning every community’s female character into an exact equivalent. [5]

His discussion of costume gives the face its larger setting. Fiber coiffure and attachments connect a carved mask with the rest of the represented body. A photograph focused on the face can make that ensemble easy to overlook. Recognizing its attachments returns attention to the complete presence encountered by the audience. [5]

Meaning & Belief

Samba Yonga describes Makishi through the idea of an active archive. Ancestral knowledge passes through dance, rhythm, music and spoken transmission; a mask on a shelf preserves material but loses much of that encounter. Her argument changes the question a gallery visitor asks. Beyond admiring a surface, the visitor can ask about the relationships through which that object once communicated. [3]

The Livingstone Museum’s submitted Samahongo description gives one character wisdom, knowledge and authority. It identifies Samahongo with Sachihongo and honours the Mbunda figure Sachihongo Machaka as ruler, hunter and medicine man. This named institutional interpretation adds a historical association to the hunter archetype. It belongs to this explanation of the character, rather than proving that every mask portrays one identical individual. [8]

Yonga also describes working with a Swedish museum to create digital surrogates of Makishi masks. In her account, a mask’s catalogue assigned it to the wrong community and reduced its role to a brief ceremony label. Preserving the face did not settle those questions of identity: her project sought the knowledge and relationships the label had left out. [3]

Later Retellings & Reception

A tradition of ancestral presence can respond to new surroundings. Silva records technological characters, including airplanes, helicopters and VCRs, and urban clubs whose dancers appear at political rallies. These additions make contemporary objects and public settings available to the repertoire. Older authority and new experience can share the stage without requiring the newcomer to have an invented ancient biography. [2]

Chitungu’s account also records disagreement over change. At a Livingstone mini Likumbi Lya Mize in 2005, a female character danced to rumba. Some community members objected; the musicians defended playing music familiar to the audience. Their dispute makes adaptation a social question with participants on both sides. Popularity alone does not settle what a performance should teach or retain. [1]

Evidence & Open Questions

Yonga’s closing comparison is with music: a score cannot replace hearing a composition. Likewise, an object record cannot supply all that dance, sound and interaction once conveyed. Her museum work with digital surrogates seeks ways to reconnect such material with knowledge. The comparison offers a concrete way to understand why a complete-looking mask may still preserve only part of its history. [3]

The Samahongo entered in UNESCO’s stolen-object museum makes absence visible in another way. Its public inventory leaves date and dimensions unknown, while preserving a Livingstone Museum image and a developed character description. Those limits belong to this particular object’s surviving record. Its ancestral associations remain readable, but they cannot fill the missing details of the mask’s material biography. [8]

The public recognition itself has two dates: proclamation in 2005 and inscription in 2008. Keeping both identifies what happened when. A living masquerade, an acquired carving and an internationally recognized practice have connected histories, each with its own evidence and chronology. [7]

Sources & Manuscript Notes

The principal works include Chitungu’s complete 2012 chapter, Silva’s 2010 review, Yonga’s public essay, LaGamma’s signed Sachihongo interpretation and Mulenga’s Chokwe account. The bibliography also gives the precise public ceremony and object records used for the named examples. [1][2][3][4][5]

Makishi Masquerade and Activities: The Reformulation of Visual and Performance Genres of the Mukanda School of Zambia ↗
Victoria Phiri Chitungu · CODESRIA, Contemporary African Cultural Productions, 2012, chapter 4
Complete chapter and notes, printed pp. 67–81, actual PDF pp. 83–97
Entire actual chapter, including named interviews, findings, conclusion, all notes and references, read from retained publisher PDF in sequential complete batches. Selected public material used; restricted school instructions, construction directions, songs and circumcision details not reproduced. Interviewees and works cited in her chapter not separately consulted. Entire 348-page edited volume not certified read. Retained research/makishi-chitungu.pdf and -pages.json.
Checked 2026-10-11
Review of Makishi: Mask Characters of Zambia, by Manuel Jordán ↗
Sónia Silva · Museum Anthropology Review 4(1), Spring 2010, pp. 137–138
Entire two-page review, especially typology, cultural attribution and technological characters
Entire actual publisher PDF read. Jordán’s book, photographs, cited footnote and fieldwork not independently consulted; claims attributed to Silva’s discussion of the book, not represented as direct consultation of Jordán. No derivative reproduction or translation of review; brief original paraphrases within source-word allowance. Retained research/makishi-silva.pdf and -pages.json.

The artist’s reading of the legend

Illuminated folios

These artworks interpret the stories and landscapes explored here. They are imaginative illustrations, rather than historical records or evidence of an encounter.

An original Sachihongo-type rounded wooden mask with curved brows and cheeks, narrow eyes and a rectangular carved mouth rests against charcoal and plum, within a subdued copper celestial frame. — Original interpretive Sachihongo-type carving informed by the public description of Mbunda ancestral hunter masks in Alisa LaGamma’s Met essay; the mask design, still-life setting and frame are artistic choices.

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