Serpent Headdress

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Nearly five feet tall, this serpent headdress towered above crowds when danced. Its two faces seemed to look in all directions. Secured by a conical framework of palm branches on a costumed man’s head, it appeared at key points in initiation rites for both boys and girls. This multi-colored snake may be the serpent-spirit Ninkinanka. It can be likened to the rainbow, whose changing colors evoke how boys transform into men during initiation. A staged circa 1954 photograph depicts the serpent headdress now at the CMA. Serpent masquerades stopped in the mid-1950s when most Nalu and Baga people converted to Islam. In the context of boys' initiations, the serpent headdress was sometimes identified as the rainbow, which the Baga and their neighbors associate with beginnings and endings, life and death, and the continuation of lineages.