Four stringed wood and gourd guitar with cowrie shells and carved gourd head from West Africa. The body is made from the bottom of a large calabash gourd which has been dried and hollowed out and animal hide parchment has been stretched over the open top of the gourd to form the face/belly of the instrument; the parchment is attached via metal tacks and a string of ornamental cowrie shells has ben laid along the edge; there are two holes in the body, one larger one at the top and a smaller one at the bottom, both of which are for the neck, which passes through the body. The neck is made of a single, flat piece of wood which as been carved to have a rectangular section for the 4 wooden pegs and a thinner post to run through the body and provide a space for the strings to be tied. The the top of the neck is another post which attaches to a dried calabash ornamentation made to look like a head, the neck of the gourd has been cut and angled to resemble a mouth, two elliptical shaped holes have been cut out for eyes, half of the top of a gourd has been used to form a nose, and a curved piece of animal hide on either side of the face are meant to resemble ears. There are 4 strings made from white thread, they all attach at 2 points on the neck, the pegs and the post protruding from the bottom of the body; each string is also strung through a bridge made from dried calabash which rests over the body.