Lobi

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The Lobi (also called Lobi-Dagara) are an ethnic group living in southern Burkina Faso and northern Ghana and the Ivory Coast . Their language of the same name belongs to the group of Gur or Volta languages .

The Lobi are known for their clay building architecture, which differs from the neighboring peoples. They live in Sukalas , kraals families surrounded by a high mud wall . Individual sukalas are usually at least "an arrow shot" away from each other. This defensibility has led to influences by Muslim and ChristianMissionaries and cultural influences from neighboring peoples were warded off more strongly than most other ethnic groups in West Africa. The Lobi traditionally live as farmers. In the past, hunting also played a larger role, this type of economy is now marginalized. In addition to the acquisition of food, the hunt for big game up to the size of elephants was also an important status symbol for men.

history

The Lobi live in West Africa in the border triangle of Burkina Faso , Ivory Coast and Ghana . The main settlement area is the southwest of Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta ), where they are said to have immigrated from Ghana via the Black Volta in the 18th century . When the Lobi is mentioned in the relevant literature, it usually means not only the Lobi themselves, but also their neighboring ethnic groups such as Birifor , Téguessié (Thunna), Pougouli (Pwa), Dagara or Gan, with whom the Lobi are closely connected through religion, traditions, customs and sometimes also through the language. The summary under the generic term Lobi goes back to the year 1898, when the settlement area of ​​these tribes was summarized by the French colonial power in administrative terms in the "Cercle du Lobi". For a long time, its residents refused to cooperate with the French. They were feared as extremely warlike and aggressive, not only by the Europeans, but also by their African neighbors.

Corporate structure

The Lobi live in a leaderless ( acephalic ) society without central authority and superordinate power structures. The structure of the settlements also corresponds to this social system. Closed localities in the European sense are rare, the farmsteads are often several hundred meters apart in the savannah . These are clay constructions (often with terraces on the flat roofs), which their owners can expand in a horizontal honeycomb shape in all directions, depending on the space required. Over time, this creates impressive, defensive-looking "clay castles". Their immediate surroundings are mostly characterized by several outside shrines , often with large clay figures, which are dedicated to the various spiritual beings ( thila ). On these shrines and in the shrine room, which is located inside each building, wooden figures ( bateba ) are set up in addition to other cultic objects to protect their owners from magic and other supernatural dangers.

religion

The Lobi religious worldview includes various categories of supersensible beings. The omnipresent but inapproachable god thangba, who created humans and later also animals, hovers above all. He turned away from the Lobi a long time ago out of disappointment at the disregard of his commandments, has since been inaccessible to them and has no direct influence on their everyday life. Therefore, it is not an object of direct worship or pictorial representations. On the other hand, its female counterpart, the fertile earth, which is regarded as the goddess of fertility, and the rain that renews the earth, which is regarded as the appearance of the Creator, are worshiped.

In addition to humans, different groups of spirit beings live on earth: Spirits of the wilderness and the thila (sing. Thil), which face the human habitat. On behalf of the Creator God they are to stand by people and help them to cope with worries and problems. In particular, they regulate living together in the community with numerous do's and don'ts.

The thila are invisible. The contact between them and people occurs especially through fortune tellers. These are consulted when a Lobi feels confronted with a threatening life situation and he suspects supernatural forces behind it, e.g. B. witchcraft or the sanction of a thil whose commandments he has violated. The fortune teller will tell his client what to do as the result of a complicated and lengthy procedure. Often he is ordered to produce a human-like (anthropomorphic) figure or to have it produced and to set it up in front of the house or in the shrine room inside the house. These figures are called bateba in the Lobi language. They are supposed to protect their owner from danger by attracting negative forces and rendering them harmless.

art

Lobi reservoir from the Brooklyn Museum

Since the 1970s, the artistic work of the Lobi has become increasingly known in the West. Various researchers examined the art of the Lobi in the countries of origin. At the same time collectors, enthusiasts, ethnologists and art historians in Europe and the USA dealt with objects of this culture in collections. As a result, this ethnic group, previously neglected by private collectors and museums, received greater attention, the highlight of which is the reconstruction of the shrine of Tyohepte Pale in the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. In Germany there have so far been two temporary exhibitions in public museums that explicitly dealt with the sculptures of the Lobi: 2011/12 in the Glaskasten Sculpture Museum in Marl and in 2016 in the Museum of the Municipal Collections in the Zeughaus in Lutherstadt Wittenberg . A special feature of the art of the Lobi is the ability to identify individual carvers and workshops. This peculiarity, which distinguishes the Lobi from many other ethnic groups in Africa, was the focus of these two exhibitions and was explicitly emphasized in the title of the Wittenberg exhibition " The Discovery of the Individual ". The individualism that is significant for the sculptures of the Lobi has its origin in their acephalic social order.

literature

Web links

Commons : Lobi  - collection of images, videos and audio files