Caption, Negre jouant au balafo (Black playing the balafon); musician playing; circular house or granary in background. Villeneuve lived in the Senegal region for about two years in the mid-to-late 1780s. The engravings in his book, he writes, were made from drawings that were mostly done on the spot during his African residence (vol. 1, pp. v-vi). The same illustration appears in color in the English translation of Villeneuve; see Frederic Shoberl (ed.), Africa; containing a description of the manners and customs, with some historical particulars of the Moors of the Zahara . . . (London, 1821), vol. 4, facing p. 119.

Renè Claude Geoffroy de Villeneuve, L'Afrique, ou histoire, moeurs, usages et coutumes des africains: le Sènègal (Paris, 1814), vol. 4, facing p. 211. (Copy in Special Collections, University of Virginia Library)

de Villeneuve, Renè Claude Geoffroy

French

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

VILE-211

Africa--Western Savanna

"Playing the Balafon, Senegal, 1780s", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed October 2, 2023, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/1663