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Art of the Baga: A Drama of Cultural Reinvention
Art of the Baga: A Drama of Cultural Reinvention traces the art and cultural history of the Baga people from their legendary flight from the highlands of the interior of Guinea to the coast, in their attempt to conserve their own religious ritual, to the eventual destruction of their traditions at mid-century with the conversion to Islam and, with independence from France, the establishment of the Republic of Guinea under an iconoclastic Marxist regime.
In this book, the Baga voice is heard in the direct testimony of three Baga writers and forty Baga consultants of all ages and backgrounds, from ten-year-old boys to elders and ritual leaders of over 100 years of age. Baga traditional leaders see themselves as the creators of their own spiritual world, revealing an extraordinary belief in their own creations. A historical tension exists between youth and elders, giving rise to the appropriation and reinvention of the art and ritual of the elders by the youth, often approaching sacrilege and the defiance of strict prohibitions. Today, the effort of the Baga to renew their traditions has engaged the author's research. Many Baga see this book and the exhibition it accompanies as the manifestation of their cultural worth and their current renaissance.
Exhibition catalogue by Frederick Lamp.
Published and distributed by The Museum for African Art and Prestel, Munich, 1996. 268 pp.
Cloth ISBN: 3-7913-1725-3. Paper ISBN: 0-945802-18-8. LCCN: 96-077336.
