Yoruba masks are worn by a traditional healer to drive evil spirits from the possessed person. The arts of the Yoruba are numerous in form, Beautifully sculptured and or carved art pieces are placed on shrines to honor the gods and the ancestors.
The Gelede masks are in fact female masks worn by men, implying that the ceremony and its meaning involves both the women and the men of the community. The men who wear the masks are dressed in their traditional colourful clothes.Gelede is a celebration that involves dance, the arts, and music from all around Yoruba society and pays tribute to female's creative and mystical power from ancestors, elders and deitieswomen known as our mothers.
They could have kept a close eye on those they deemed suspicious, and even while there were many Japanese Americans, the government could have American citizens report any suspicious behavior that they viewed from their Japanese American neighbors.
