Footnotes

Provenance
A private collection, UK.

According to Yusuf Grillo, his favourable thematic use of the drummer in his works originated from his childhood. While growing up in Lagos, Grillo and a group of his friends would often be exposed to many drum players at special occasions. As there was no television or radio during his adolescence, drummers became the main source of entertainment at family and celebratory functions. It is these events that prompted a sense of nostalgia for Grillo, and that he revisits in his works when depicting a drummer or in this case Ayan, the Yoruba title for a talking drum player or the action of drumming. Chika Okeke-Agulu argues that the prominence of drums within Grillo's work as 'of all the instruments in Yoruba music ensemble, the drum is arguably the most important because of its ability to produce sonic equivalences of the Yoruba speech'(Chika Okeke-Agulu, Yusuf Adebayo: Painting. Lagos. Life, (Italy: Skira Editore, 2020) p, 39). Grillo himself elaborates on his affinity for the drum:

"We call it 'talking drum' but in the hands of a Master drummer, it is a versatile as a pipe organ. The drum stick selectively hits not only points on the circular skin, its circumference but even outside it. The muscles around the armpit, the fingers on the other hand and at rare times the thigh and knee can produce CHORDS, TREMOLO, and STACCATO." (Yusuf Grillo, in, IGI ARABA: An Exhibition and Retrospective of Works by Yusuf Grillo, (Art House Contemporary, The Space, 2015).

The present work displays a drummer or Ayan in the act of creating music. The bold redness of the work is certainly rare in Grillo's oeuvre, and contributes to the vibrant mood of the work. Where Grillo is widely recognised for his blue and fluid tonal palettes, here he emphasises the main subject, isolating them from their surroundings through this contrasting red. However, the work remains rhythmic in terms of the meticulously geometrical composition, iconic of the artist.

To be heavily influenced by his heritage and cultural history was not a peculiar tendency of Grillo. Given his prominent involvement with the Zaria Art Society formed in 1958 collaboratively with other dominant contemporary artists of Nigeria such as Uche Okeke and Demas Nwoko, Grillo's work may be read with a framework of the 'Natural Synthesis' ideology. This concept was rooted with the understanding that incorporating pre-colonial and colonial artistic concepts was to be informed of ones history and was to result in Modern West African Art. By acknowledging the colonial past of their country, the Zaria Art Society sought to regain ownership of their heritage and to not consciously limit their creative intuition. Grillo himself stated:

"This politically desirable aim often forms the philosophy of many a contemporary artist, with the sad result that sincere creative urges are replaced by over consciously chauvinistic syntheses." (Yusuf A. Grillo,"Appreciations of Felix Idubor", African Arts 2:1 (autumn 1968), p. 33.)

Indeed, the drum emulates a symbolic narrative for the cultural life of the people Grillo grew up surrounded by and is therefore befitting of a reoccurring subject in the artist's painting. What makes the present work a rare piece in his oeuvre, is the unusual (yet not abnormal) use of red in the palette and therefore distinguishing the work as rare in comparison to his wider body of work.