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Yoruba Epa Festival

The Epa headdress is used in the annual Yoruba Epa festival celebrating the important social roles of a town and its people. The headdress is worn at the climax of the week-long festival whose purpose is to reinforce the structure of the community. In the Epa festival, men perform the ceremony with large headdresses carved from wood, in honor of Epa, the male deity who was a wood carver. The headdress is not just a work of art, but also a representation of the very practical nature of the Yoruba spiritual system.

African aesthetics is based on ethical and religious values, and for this reason the principal subject of the headdress are human figures. The Epa headdress is an example of African art in a ritual context that deals with the vital moral and spiritual concerns of the human condition (African Art: Aesthetics and Meaning). The headdress is an excellent example of the fusion of form and function that characterizes African art.

Carved from soft wood, the relief impressions of the headdress are meant to be ritual objects. The three-dimensional design is richly varied. Although the headdress is based on the world of reality, it is not representational. It is unimportant for the figures to look like particular individuals. When a headdress is worn, the wearerÆs face is usually disguised by cloth. The purpose of the Epa headdress is to provide a temporary home for a spirit, and for the wearer to perform a ritual act for the benefit of his community. The Epa festival celebrates the chiefs, farmers, warrior, hunters, priests and women. Since Yoruba society is patrilineal, the role of women is depicted in Yoruba mythology with respect to fertility. Women play ôa much more formidable role in Yoruba rituals than they do in political life of traditional societyö (Delano 17).

A description of the art object under consideration will illustrate how it communicates the aesthetics of the Yoruba culture. When the male dancer appea...

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Yoruba Epa Festival. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:12, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1701371.html