Every December, when the harmattan haze turns millet stubble golden, the Chi Wara emerge in the fields outside Ségou. Dancers wear tall wooden antelope crests and move between furrows, imitating the mythical being who taught humanity to farm. These are living instruments of ceremony, carved to honor the debt every harvest owes to the antelope that first broke the earth for human hands.
The Dance of Two Horns
I spent a month studying thirty-seven Chi Wara crests last winter. What struck me was not their consistency, but their variation. Each carver made distinct decisions about horn weight, mane spacing, and the density of openwork between neck and body.
Each carver made distinct decisions about horn weight, mane spacing, the density of openwork. These were not copies of a template. They were arguments in lacquered wood.