The Baga and their art - art of a people living in part of Guinea, Museum of African Art, New York, NY; adapted from 'Art of the Baga: A Drama of Cultural Reinvention' - Under the Hammer - Cover Story

American Visions, April-May, 1997 by Frederick Lamp

By the 1950s the southern Baga subgroups of the Kalum and Kakissa had universally converted to Islam, and most of the northern Baga villages had abandoned many of their indigenous religious and artistic conventions and had seen most of their youth converted to Islam. Comments by observers both within and outside Baga society give a clear impression of a beginning of an end in the struggle between those holding traditional power and those gaining power through Islamic alliances. Few elements of pre-Islamic Baga ritual seem to have persisted:

The last initiation of young men at Era was in 1950

(elder, Christian, Pukur, 1986).

I was in the last initiation that took place at Tolkotsh in

1952 (middle-aged man, Christian, Sitemu, 1992).

I saw a-Bol [the image and ritual signifying benevolent

guidance/for the last time at Katako in 1954. And since

then I never saw it again (middle-aged man, Muslim,

Kawass, Sitemu, 1992).

By the mid-1950s Baga society was in turmoil, its ancient structures having been battered down, with no consensus reached on its future religious and political direction. A European witness reported in 1954: "Pressed from every side, Baga society appears tom to pieces: village chiefs against canton chiefs, family against family, youth against the elders, these latter intractable, everyone exhausted from the battles for prestige. More and more numerous are the young men who abandon their village for a nearby urban environment, where they hope to escape all control. Those who remain marry strangers, convert to Islam, and reject their former identity."

Most Baga today trace the coming of Islam and the conversion of the Baga to one unforgettable moment: the final, disastrous disruption of Baga culture that occurred just before independence, in 1954-57. That was when two Muslim missionaries, Asekou Sayon and Asekou Bokari, of Malinke and Susu origin, respectively, entered Baga territory and literally destroyed whatever was left of ritual life.

Asekou Sayon would collect all the ruffians of one

village and move with them to the next village to

plunder it. He would collect information on a village

before moving to it, and when he arrived with his mob he

could zero in on all the sacred sites, sacred objects, and

the people responsible (elder, Bugor, Sitemu, 1986).

We had a tall cotton tree here when Asekou Sayon came

and he made us cut it down. He made us cut down all the

forests to denude the area as it is now- to strip it of

sacred groves (elder, Tshalbonto, Sitemu. 1986).

Several individuals who had been denounced were

placed in the sun and put at the disposition of the young

women, who dragged them on the ground, across the

village, chanting their songs of victory. Some of those

subjected to these tortures, flagellations and injuries in

public died shortly thereafter. The day after their arrival,

they would seize the artworks and the masks, which they

sold for their profit; others which they found noxious

were burned. The next day, aside of the fence, one could

see the objects that had been abandoned and exposed to