Male figure

This musician has been playing his xylophone for more than 250 years. Among the oldest woodcarvings in these galleries, it was created by the Dogon people from Mali, who have a very old art tradition. Its dry surface and lack of a thick crust of offerings suggest that it was not used as an altarpiece, as many Dogon figures are. Instead, it was probably made as a reference to migrations long ago, when the ancestors of the Dogon left the Mali Empire around the 14th century.