ABSTRACT
Blackwood carving among the Makonde should be regarded as a cultural movement. However, although it can be regarded as a phenomenon unique to Muedan Makonde in the characteristic forms through which it finds expression, it by no means forms a part of the experience of every Makonde of Muedan origin. As a cultural movement carried forward through a diversity of sculptural expressions by a relatively large number of Makonde men, it raises questions relating not only to the biographies of its most creative proponents and innovators (discussed in Chapter 6), but also to do with the means by which black-wood sculptors have successfully managed to open up new contexts of expression. A major factor in their success, here, appears to have been their ability to penetrate the fundamental logic of their indigenous transformatory practices, like masquerade (by means of which they have traditionally controlled the boundaries between different social realms), then “translate” it, as it were, into their sculpture. In the previous chapter I showed how Makonde sculptors, including Hendrick and Chanuo, were thus able to master and transform their personal circumstances by using their sculpture as a means to mould encounters with peers, patrons and clients to a logic of mutual responsiveness and transformation. In order to clarify, as far as possible, the underlying means through which this, and other such achievements, may be understood to have been accomplished, it is again necessary to place play at centre stage and to consider its cultural role from yet another perspective.
