Islam and the Creative Imagination in Senegal

In few other places in the creative traditions of sub-Saharan Africa isthe factor of Islam more prominent and influential than in Senegal.Manifested on the level of form and subject-matter and spanning a widecross-section of talent in both the traditional and modern media ofcreative expression, this prominence and influence can be attributed toanumber of factors ranging from the artistic maturity, religioussensibility, intellectual astuteness and ideological orientation ofindividual artists to the more general impact that Islam, as a dominantreligious force, is perceived to have had on secular life in Senegal. Thesefactors, to a large extent, determine the various ways in which individualSenegalese artists define themselves and their art vis-a-vis Islam, inparticular, and society, in general, definitions which creatively translateinto formal choice, thematic focus and, to use a cliche, “message”.Two opposite sets of equally militant attitudes constitute the polarextremes that bracket the range of Senegalese artists’ creative responseto Islam, thus paralleling or ‘reflecting’ similar patterns that obtain inthe society at large. This is hardly surprising, given the conception thatSenegalese, and indeed, most African artists, have of the nature andfunction of art in society. On one pole is that ensemble of attitudes shapedby a zealous embrace and vigorous advocacy of the primordiality ofIslam as the most, indeed, the only, legitimate and effective vehicle forthe totalization of the individual and the society. Art in the hands ofindividuals on this end of the creative spectrum becomes an instrumentof propagation of religious ideals, in this case Islamic religious ideals.But beyond this religious vision or in conjunction with it, cultural and ...