In Memory of Simon Ottenberg, Colleague and Friend

The varying relationships between African youth participating in initiation rites and the elders who conduct the rites were richly available in the literature when completing my dissertation on Kuba male initiation rites in the 1980s. But during the same period there were scant discussions on the pre-initiation period when children are often involved in such play activity as mask and costume making, which often includes masked performances with dance, song, and musical accompaniment. I found these forms of childhood play to be a dominant feature for Kuba boys living in the Democratic Republic of Congo.The correlation between childhood art-making and play activity and adult artistic expression was suggested by Simon Ottenberg in an important article entitled “The Childhood of African Art” (1976). The article called for more serious study and analysis of the role of art-making by children and its role in the development of adult aesthetic skills in both the secular and religious sphere. Ottenberg's publication Boyhood Rituals in an African Society: An Introduction (1989) was a ground-breaking contribution to a fuller understanding of the role children's play activities were to a much broader socialization process. For Ottenberg this sociocultural process begins for uninitiated children during their early childhood, continues during the initiation rites themselves, and becomes more fully realized in adulthood.Ottenberg's conclusions about children's play activities found relevance during my own research while studying boys’ and men's masquerades associated with initiation and funeral rites among the Southern Kuba (Fig. 1). My interest in children's masquerade traditions was heightened when I chaired a panel “Children's Masquerade Traditions” at the Seventh Triennial Symposium on African Art, UCLA in 1986, including a paper I presented on the “Socialization of Kuba Boys to Masquerade.”Simon and I occasionally met in person at various conferences, but our conversations about the topic became more frequent when I joined the staff of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) in 1998. Our discussions continued with Simon's annual summer research visits to NMAfA, when friends would gather together for dinner (Fig. 2), and our meetings at various conferences, including an African Studies Association meeting in Boston in 2003, where I was a panel discussant in which Simon presented a paper on “Masquerading Among Pre-Initiation African Children.”Slowly a plan emerged to develop both an edited volume on children's masquerade (Ottenberg and Binkley 2006) and an exhibition on the same subject (Playful Performers, April 9-Dec 12, 2004, The National Museum of African Art). The task was not clear-cut, as the subject required primary documentation and selection of objects to create a compelling exhibit. It was certainly Simon's stature in the field and professional connections across decades of scholarship that helped to identify the Africanists who contributed to the edited volume and also helped to select the objects and photographic documentation that would make a successful exhibition possible.The intellectual curiosity and unflagging energy that Simon exhibited in the creation of these two projects was subsequently visible every time we met. I vividly recall Simon describing the several projects he was simultaneously working on even when he was approaching 100 years of age. His friendship and collaboration over the years continue to be an inspiration.