Kuba

Category: Tribes

The Kuba live in the Lower Kasai region of central Zaire in a rich environment of dense forest and savanna.
Organized into a federation of chiefdoms, the almost 200,000 Kuba are a diverse group of over eighteen different
peoples unified under the Bushong king. They share a single economy and, to varying degrees, common cultural
and historical traditions. Agriculture is the main occupation, supplemented by hunting, fishing, and trading. The
name "Kuba" comes from the Luba people to the southeast. The Kuba call themselves "the children of Woot"— after their founding ancestor (Vansina 1964:6;1078:4).

Kuba arts primarily address status, prestige, and the court; they are manifestations of social and political hierarchy.
Rank and wealth are expressed in extensive displays of regalia: jewelry, rich garments of embroidered raffia cloth,
ceremonial knives, swords, drums, and elaborated utilitarian items. Valuable imported cowrie shells and beads
emblellish garments, furniture, baskets, and masks.

The outstanding Kuba style diagnostic is geometric patterning used to embellish the surfaces of many objects.
These designs are woven into raffia textiles and mats, plaited in walls, executed in shell and bead decoration, and
incised on bowls, cups, boxes, pipes, staffs, and other forms including masks. All art forms and designs are laden
with symbolic and iconographic meaning, and the same is true of the rich Kuba masquerades.

Masking was first introduced by a woman who carved a face on a calabash, the original model for initiation masks.
The invention was taken over by men, incorporated into initiation, and remains a male privilege. Once Bushong
boys move into the nkan initiation shelter, they can wear masks and make excursions into the village frightening
women and small children. More powerful masks are worn by initiation officials. The masked Kuba dancer is, in
every instance, a spirit manifestation (Torday 1910:250; Vansina 1955:140).