AN ART CRITIC IN AFRICA The Great Mosque in Djenné, Mali

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The Great Mosque at Djenné in Mali at sunrise.
By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: April 19, 2012
DJENNÉ, Mali - As in so much of the Islamic world,"insha'Allah" - "if
God wills it" - is how people punctuate conversations inthis
predominantly MuslimWest African country. If you speak of starting a
project, or taking a trip, or trying to pay a debt, the outcome is
always understood to be conditional.
Recently Malians have had to trust heaven more than usual. The year's
millet crop arrived too early and much too thin. In late fall and
winter there were attacks on Europeans by a Qaeda affiliate. The
military overthrow of the government in Bamako, the nation's capital,
left one of Africa's poorest nations shut off from the world.
Meanwhile Tuareg rebels and Islamist forces have seized the northern
half of the country, including Timbuktu.
Tourism, so vital to the economy, has been reduced to a trickle,
though West Africa has never attracted the kind ofmonument-hungry
crowdsthat flood into Egypt. Most travelers who come here are in
search of "black" Africa - the Africa of so-called tribal art - and
many are only dimly aware of the extraordinaryvitality of Islamic
culture, old and new, below the Sahara.
In modern cities like Bamako, Mali's capital, andDakar in Senegal,
this culture often assumes a pop voice, with religious phrases
spray-painted across walls and devotional music pounding and keening
over the airwaves. In the ancient pilgrimage city of Djenné, set
between two rivers in the country's center and accessible only by
ferry, the voice is quieter, tempered by tradition, but also shaped
and, some would say, distorted, by modern intervention./- - -