TRIBUTE TO ONE OF AFRICA'S GREATEST ARTISTS AND THINKERS!
GAMBIA'S EBOU MADI SILLAH

By Baaba Sillah mu Sabel
February 2006


In 1958, I was still a pupil at the Leman Street Infants School. My class 
was to represent the Mohammedan School at the annual Inter-schools Physical 
Education championships. Class 3, my Class, was detained in order to work on 
some new exercise routines and work-out drills. We left the School premises 
rather late that evening and on my way home with some School friends we 
walked along Leman Street heading towards Hill Street.

Just after walking past Luumen and all the way up to the Farage Holdings at 
Hill Street, there was some extra-ordinary work of Art on the pavement. They 
were all line drawings in Charcoal. Like all novices, I found the work of 
Art quite astonishing, it caused me a fair amount of consternation. I was 
completely awed.  This was something I could at the time hope to find only 
in Comic books. I started viewing the Art from the Luumen end but one of my 
school friends who lived in the neighbourhood and had had some experience 
with this Artist's peculiar order and form of Pavement Artistry, said to me 
that in order to make sense out of the drawings, I ought to start viewing 
them from the Farage Holdings and head towards Luumen.

This way, one could view graphically a whole film of 'Zorro'. I heeded his 
advice and saw the opening scene where Zorro emerges from a distance in a 
rocky landscape riding his horse. He had a mask over his nose and mouth. All 
that was visible on his face were his eyes, his forehead and his Cowboy hat. 
Well of course what is a Cowboy without his pistol? Zorro had two, one on 
each side pocket. I combed through all the slabs of the sidewalk and each 
one of them was a complete screen, action-packed ‘til the very end. Zorro 
was the victor and of course, we identified with him as young boys will.

All the way home we kicked and punched and simulated the Zorro manoeuvres.  
I asked for the name of the Pavement Artist and was told that it was Ebou 
Sillah. The name did not ring a bell but someone mentioned that he was the 
brother of 'Debs'-Suleiman Sillah. It all fell into place as Suleiman 
himself was already an accomplished and known Artist in his own right. Debs 
could even at that tender age draw the Life-cycle of the Mosquito, the Puff 
Adder and a house built out of bricks. This was something that most of us in 
his class could not contemplate doing.

In 1960, Abdu Latif Njaay, opened the first Arabic Madrassa in Banjul. The 
Pupils came from different age-grades, from diverse backgrounds and quite a 
few of us had very distinct personalities. Njaay Saasu, Abdulaay Jaak, Badou 
Saar, Goora Nyang, Chuuch Njaay, Marie Ngooda Saar, Mam Yusu Faye,  
Chaanador, Baay Ndongo Faal to name but a few.

For some reason both the attrition and the recruitment rates of the Daara 
were high. It was only later I figured out why. However in this constant 
state of flux came a new entrant.  He was called up in front of the Class to 
recite Surratu Yassin. He was clad in a pale yellow tee shirt and a pair of 
grey shorts. The young man stood there and without the slightest hesitation, 
without the Koran and without the assistance of a Prompter, recited the 
Surra. We were impressed. The comment that the Ustas made after thanking him 
was that the young man recited the Surra with a rummy Pulaarr accent. Later 
on we gathered that the young man who was around fifteen was a former pupil 
of the famous Koranic teacher, Baaba at Musante.

That young man was Ebou Madi Sillah and this was my first meeting with the 
Artist in flesh. Ever since that day, my contact with Ebou remained. Most 
people inadvertently call us brothers. This may largely be due to the 
coincidence of our surnames. The truth is that Ebou and I are close friends, 
notwithstanding the geographical distance that lay between us. I spoke with 
both Ebou and his wife Joorr, barely three weeks before his passing. Our 
closeness can be attributed to our commonly held convictions of conserving 
and defending a set of shared values and principles.

Born in 1946 in Banjul at Orange Street, Ebou grew up in the Street-wise   
neighbourhood of Half-Die. He was schooled in Banjul. Later on he went to 
the School of Art in Dakar and to the University Of Dakar in Senegal. Ebou 
continued his Education in Canada. He returned to Gambia and up until his 
demise was a Lecturer in Art at the University of The Gambia. It is not my 
intention to go into his Career path as others have done so quite ably. What 
I intend to do however is to examine the influences that might have impacted 
on the mind of this highly educated man who could engage anyone from every 
strata of society and discuss subjects as widely different and varied as Art 
and Zoology. I want to discuss his work, his outlook on life and his World 
view.

The son of a Shipwright Ebou spent a good deal of his childhood growing up 
around the harbour and Port of Banjul. He hails from a proverbial 
Senegambian extended family with its attendant ramifications and nuances. A 
child of the post war era, born a year after the end of World War 2, Ebou 
saw first hand the ravages and excesses of Colonial rule and savoured its 
tipple at the Colonial School.

Senghore and Cessaire's Negritude were powerful intellectual pulses beating 
in tandem with the agitations of the independence movements, the rise of 
African Nationalism, the cries of Uhuru and 'We want Bread and Butter’ and 
the post-independence African respublica. One could readily glean from the 
above that even from an earlier age, Ebou's influences were legion.  Some or 
all of these factors combined will have had a colossal impact in shaping a 
copious and robust mind - Ebou’s mind. It is already evident that through 
his teachings and his work Ebou has and will continue to leave an indelible 
imprint on Senegambian Art education and Senegambian cultural history for 
generations yet unborn.

Up until the early and mid sixties, he was known to all as Ebou. Soon after 
the Cuban missile crisis, the growth of Black Power, Flower power and the 
Student rebellions in France and in England, after he became an avid 
subscriber and reader of literature from the far left (Gramma etc), after he 
had read all of Nkrumah's works, ‘Paabi's works’ (Ebou's term) and became 
involved in Trade Union activities, most notably, the Bread and Butter 
Strike of 1958 and the 61 Workers Strike, after he had read Fanon, Cheikh 
Anta Diop, Debray, Marx and Lenin, Sekou Touray, Malcolm X, Padmore, Du 
Bois, James and Richard Wright among other seminal treatises, he became a 
total convert to Pan-Africanism. He hungered for Africans to participate in 
the modern world. He lamented Africa's 'technological arrest' and hankered 
for Africans to break away from this and master machines, excavate the 
minerals out of the earth organise themselves, grow strong and become truly 
autonomous and self-governing.

Ebou revered and cherished the Pan-Africanist ideals and lived by them. By 
the mid sixties, the name Ebou had become interchangeable with Comrade. 
Armed with the gospels of the times, Comrade engaged with every one - young 
and old, boys, girls, the poor and powerless alike. Comrade embarked on a 
crusade and indulged all who cared to share with him the prevailing 
doctrine-'Soxlasi'. Yes! Another one of his terms meaning ‘the Struggle’, 
the big issue at hand, change. Comrade's home was everybody's home. His 
meals were shared with the Comrades.

These were good times and hopeful times too! Most of the African colonies 
had attained constitutional independence. Portugal still held on to her 
Colonies. The peoples of Guinea Bissau, Angola, Mozambique embarked on a 
bitter and painful Armed Struggle.

The emerging so-called independent African Countries were given an Anthem, a 
flag and a Constitution raked-up from Marlboro House or Paris. In other 
words, at independence we had inherited a state apparatus reeking of 
Colonialism and entirely inimical to the interest of Africa. The 
consequences of this were what is now felt today and known as 
Neo-Colonialism - a state which was not geared to the development of the 
people, but one which coerced and condemned them into accepting an appendage 
status.

Lumumba was brutally murdered and with him went the aspirations of the 
people of the Congo. It gave imperialism the chance to dig its heels into 
the rich mineral resources of that country. Paabi in Ghana was overthrown 
thanks to the British, American, German and Israeli Agents. He was lured to 
Hanoi to mediate between the Americans and the Vietnamese. He never made it 
to Hanoi because the coup happened while he was in China. This Hanoi mission 
was very much encouraged.

To encourage him to go, the Americans even promised to stop the bombing of 
Hanoi to make sure that his plane arrived safely. The coup took place just 
48 hours after he left. The British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was in 
favour of Nkrumah being assassinated at Accra airport before he left for 
Hanoi, just to make sure. The Americans were against it. They thought it 
would act against them to make a martyr of him. They thought it would be 
sufficient to get him out of the country and that they them would never hear 
from him again.

The story repeats itself throughout the African continent. In independent 
Africa there have been well over 70 coups. The Western technology of 
destruction still decimates Africa.

Paabi's book “Neo colonialism, the last stage of imperialism” had a profound 
impact on Comrade’s thinking and indeed on that of many of his 
contemporaries. The book opposed the workings of monopoly capitalism in 
Africa. This book so alarmed and offended the Americans that they suspended 
all aid to Ghana.

Comrade’s thinking now started to veer towards Armed Struggle. This is 
understandable viewed against the backdrop of the apathy and the reactionary 
nature of the newly independent States and their leadership. An additional 
impetus came from the sit-tight white settler States refusing to accept 
black majority rule. Dedan Kimathy and his movement, Mau Mau, had 
successfully delivered a nasty blow to Kenya's sitting White Oligarchy's 
pride and arrogance. Following were a proliferation of armed movements. 
FRELIMO, MPLA, ZANU, ZAPU, PAIGC, etc.

I left The Gambia for the best part of ten years and had little or no 
contact with Comrade.  During this period, I was caught up with life's 
trials and tribulations in Europe and when I got back we were together again 
as colleagues at the School of Education at The Gambia College. He had gone 
to Dakar and back and had obviously mellowed in many ways though the Lion in 
him still roared. He was disillusioned with the struggle. Many of his 
erstwhile Comrades became turn-coats, some escaped into religion as a way of 
buying their way into positions in the Civil Service; others came unhinged, 
some became mad and others went into exile.

Comrade now turned into his Art and a serious study of Political Philosophy. 
By now he has become a family man and the demands of daily existence compete 
with his other pastimes.

In one of his lucid moments, I caught him doing some work for an NGO and 
listening to his Jazz under the shade of the lime tree at his backyard in 
Kanifing. I played the devil’s advocate by asking, How could this Art you 
are doing engender a positive change in The Gambia? His reply was prudish 
and combative. Art has the ability of creating and forming bonds with our 
social political and economic worlds. In what way, I probed? Art in Africa 
he said, is functional in the sense that when we make a piece of art, we 
ensure that it has a direct utilitarian value. We make Masks to perform some 
ritual.

We share it with one another so that it is not owned by a rich Collector or 
connoisseur. We at times carry our art in the way we dress, the way we plat 
our hair, our choice of the chewing stick and fan we carry for a specific 
occasion.  And so on... Look all around us, he continued! Art is diffused 
through our lives.  Listen to the Fishermen and Builders and their work 
songs; watch the suggestive dances; every facet of our lives is associated 
with Art and rituals. Even to kill an Animal, we perform some ritual that 
connects us with the gods, the ancestors, the life here and the after-life. 
Above all the way of performing the ritual itself is a form of art.

To some, Ebou is an enigma. His detractors in the former Gambian regime saw 
him as a loose cannon. This is a label he shares with a few other Gambians 
who also refuse to kow-tow to oppression and intimidation and are creating 
paradigm shifts in all spheres of existence in a Society that is hugely 
conformist and intolerant of difference, not on principled grounds but for 
the sake of posturing and for grovelling purposes. One just need to hold 
views that fall outside the realm of mainstream thinking to earn such 
derogatory labels Thankfully, this entrenched bigotry has started to wane as 
younger Gambian people are beginning to challenge such backward and deeply 
entrenched views.

A maverick till the very end, Comrade lived by the sweat of his brow and 
always had the plight of the poor and powerless in his heart. The last time 
we met in my house at Kololi in September together with Gumbo Touray, 
Ibrahim Lowe and Lord Sallah, a heated debate sparked off over the role of 
the intelligentsia in National development. Ebou’s last most profound 
statement I recall was 'You guys need a referee and I have appointed 
myself,” he said wittily, ‘You are all intellectuals! Your intellectualism 
is absolutely meaningless unless it becomes combative and situated within 
its proper context and within its appropriate organisational framework so 
that it can auger well for change.”

I could carry on endlessly citing a whole raft of Comrade-anecdotes. I will 
not do that. However, I cannot conclude without making reference to his 
light-hearted side. There were indeed many other sides to him and this was 
one of them. Comrade had a terrific sense of humour and was very apt at 
coining the most colourful metaphors under the sun. I am sure that no one 
could write a fitting eulogy without making mention of his jibes. He would 
have liked it. In one of my trips 'back home', Comrade's first comment was 
"My Brother, have you come to view the Indian film.... Sunyu Gaanyi dungyu 
Nit.?"

A combatant till the very last! A luta continua!!


Comrade Ebou, if I could, I know I can,
I will sing you the song of Baninde.
For you have said no to oppression
For you have defied the oppressor through your work and deed.

If I could, I think I can
Praise you for putting back the honour of the meek and the pecked.
If I could,
I think I can,
Thank you for making us see that Art is change
And change is art.

If I could
I think I can
Agree with you that Art lives forever while men and women come and go.

Comrade Ebou, while we put you to rest and bid our farewells,
We thank you again for the wisdom you bequeath to us -
The knowledge that Art is for ever
And that knowledge is power!



BAABA SILLAH mu SABEL FEBRUARY 2006

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