Headdress: Antelope (Adoné)

Relatively naturalistic antelope headdresses known as adoné are primarily attributed to the northernmost Kurumba region of Burkina Faso, which encompasses the towns of Toulfe, Djibo, and Aribinda. Leadership in these communities has traditionally been decentralized, with lineages of the same clan living together in large neighborhoods. Adoné related intimately to the lives of these extended families; it is possible they were commissioned to honor the memories of leading elders upon their deaths. During the sacrifices made to inaugurate such a work, it was given the name of the deceased and became a memorial infused with its own life force. Adoné may also have served as sites for offerings and prayers to the ancestors as well as visual highlights of a series of honorific performances. They could be used as portable altars or placed on an existing altar in the ancestral spirit house within a family compound. When danced in performance, they were worn on the top of the head as crests.

The appearance of adoné generally accompanied three major annual events. They represented clan ancestors when the bodies of male and female elders were led to burial; they served as tributes to those deceased elders at commemorative celebrations organized during the dry season; and they were celebratory emblems at collective sacrifices, held just before the first rains in late May and June, which paid homage to the spirits of the ancestors and to the protective antelope that is the totem of most Kurumba clans.

The design of these graceful antelope forms emphasizes the slender features of the animal's horns, neck, and snout. Typically the surface is enlivened with extensive geometric patterns of brilliant ocher brown, red, yellow, and kaolin pigments.