The Ancestors Return

The egungun masquerade is the Yoruba ceremony in which the ancestral dead return among the living, embodied in masked and elaborately costumed dancers whose full covering conceals the wearer entirely, so that what appears is understood as the ancestor rather than the person beneath. Egungun, a word associated with the collective ancestral dead, represents the continuing presence and authority of the forebears within the community: the masquerades appear at festivals and funerals, dance to drumming, and may deliver blessings, admonitions and judgements in altered voices, acting as a link between the living lineage and its dead.

The masking is managed by dedicated societies, and touching the costumed figure is forbidden. The institution expresses the strong Yoruba emphasis on the ancestors as an active moral presence, and it has travelled with the tradition into the African diaspora, where related ancestral masquerades are found in the Americas.