{"id":"EXH2026-011","label":"Kongo (Bakongo)","people_or_site":"Kongo (Bakongo)","country_current":"Angola","historic_region":"San Salvador / Mbanza Kongo","macroregion":"Africa / Central Africa","local_name":"ngwingwingwe","source_term":"rhombe / ngwingwingwe","source_language":"French/English","object_description":"Bamboo or wood blade on a cord.","function_summary":"'Regarded only as a plaything'; bystanders shield faces for fear of the blade flying off (Weeks).","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"exhaustiveness2026","source_type":"primary_ethnography","source_url":"https://archive.org/details/monographseries03","page_or_plate":"Soderberg p. 185; Weeks 1914 p. 126","map_confidence":"high","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"Mbanza Kongo (San Salvador), stated locality","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Among the Kongo around San Salvador (Mbanza Kongo), the bull-roarer was a blade of bamboo or wood whirled on a cord, and by the time the Baptist missionary John H. Weeks recorded it in the early 1900s it was regarded only as a plaything. Women, men, and children alike would put their hands over their faces when someone approached twirling one — for fear, Weeks judged, of the many accidents caused by the blade coming off its string and flying into a bystander's face. Bertil Söderberg, cataloguing the instruments of the Lower Congo decades later, saw in the toy a secret instrument of initiation rites that had passed to the children.","pull_quote":"There is a bull-roarer (Ngwingwingwe) made from a bamboo or a piece of wood. It is regarded only as a plaything. Women, and also men and children, put their hands over their faces when a person approaches who is twirling one of them, but this appears to be only from fear of the many accidents due to bull-roarers coming off their strings, and flying into the faces of those who happen to be near.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Weeks, Among the Primitive Bakongo (1914), p. 126","term_gloss":"ngwingwingwe — the Kongo name (around San Salvador) for the bamboo or wooden bull-roarer; recorded by Weeks as the local term for the whirled plaything.","cls":"play_practical","class_label":"Play / practical","color":"#24766D","is_candidate":false,"flags":["toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Bertil Söderberg, Les instruments de musique au Bas-Congo et dans les régions avoisinantes (1956), p. 185, quoting John H. Weeks, Among the Primitive Bakongo (1914), p. 126","url":"https://archive.org/details/monographseries03"}],"source_citations":"Bertil Söderberg, Les instruments de musique au Bas-Congo et dans les régions avoisinantes (1956), p. 185, quoting John H. Weeks, Among the Primitive Bakongo (1914), p. 126","source_display":"Bertil Söderberg, Les instruments de musique au Bas-Congo et dans les régions avoisinantes (1956), p. 185, quoting John H. Weeks, Among the Primitive Bakongo (1914), p. 126","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Bamboo or wood blade on a cord.","function_display":"'Regarded only as a plaything'; bystanders shield faces for fear of the blade flying off (Weeks).","confidence_display":"high","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"kongo","display_name":"Kongo (Bakongo)","image":{"full":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/bm_E_Af1909-0513-212.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/thumbs/bm_E_Af1909-0513-212_thumb.jpg","credit":"© The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Af1909-0513-212)","license":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","source_page":"https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1909-0513-212","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"A Luba bullroarer, DR Congo","pool_id":"auto-museum_harvest--bm_E_Af1909-0513-212"},"slug":"exh2026-011-kongo-bakongo"}