{"id":"REIGLE1995-001","label":"Sorang sapana, silent old voice","people_or_site":"Sorang (Nekeni/Nekgini-speaking village)","country_current":"Papua New Guinea","historic_region":"Sorang village, Rai Coast, Madang Province","macroregion":"Oceania / Sahul","local_name":"sapana","source_term":"sapana","source_language":"English","object_description":"A large wooden blade shaped like a bull-roarer.","function_summary":"Sacred sound-making object whose mechanism was secret from women and young children; formerly played as a bull-roarer, now kept for decoration.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"reigle1995_sorang_sapana","source_type":"primary_ethnography","source_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2292/37532","page_or_plate":"p. 124","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"Sorang village, Rai Coast District, Madang Province; Reigle names Sorang but gives no coordinates.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Sorang is one of seven villages that speak Nekeni, and its sacred sounds have names. Karisi is a very small coconut-shell ocarina: when the initiates leave their enclosure, one man walks ahead of them playing it to warn everyone else away. Kaap tawing belongs to Sorang alone — the men stamp the ground together until the earth trembles, and it feels like an earthquake; it is named for the Rufous Night Heron, the bird that lives by water. All of these are tambaran and all of them are sacred: women and young children may use the public names, but they must not know how the sounds are made. Among them is the sapana, large and wooden and shaped like a bull-roarer. In earlier times, Sorang men say, it was played as one. Now it is kept for decoration.","pull_quote":"Sapana looks like a bull-roarer; it is quite large, and made from wood. I was told that, in earlier times, it was actually played as a bull-roarer, but now it's used only for decoration.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Reigle, 'Sound of the Spirits, Song of the Myna' (1995), p. 124.","term_gloss":"kaap: ‘tambaran’ in Nekeni — the class of sacred sound-making things the sapana belongs to; tawing: the Rufous Night Heron, which names kaap tawing, the stamping tambaran found at Sorang alone.","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["women_taboo"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Robert Reigle, 'Sound of the Spirits, Song of the Myna,' in New Guinea Ethnomusicology Conference Proceedings, ed. Robert Reigle, Occasional Papers in Pacific Ethnomusicology 4 (Auckland: University of Auckland, 1995), p. 124","url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2292/37532"}],"source_citations":"Robert Reigle, 'Sound of the Spirits, Song of the Myna,' in New Guinea Ethnomusicology Conference Proceedings, ed. Robert Reigle, Occasional Papers in Pacific Ethnomusicology 4 (Auckland: University of Auckland, 1995), p. 124","source_display":"Robert Reigle, 'Sound of the Spirits, Song of the Myna,' in New Guinea Ethnomusicology Conference Proceedings, ed. Robert Reigle, Occasional Papers in Pacific Ethnomusicology 4 (Auckland: University of Auckland, 1995), p. 124","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A large wooden blade shaped like a bull-roarer.","function_display":"Sacred sound-making object whose mechanism was secret from women and young children; formerly played as a bull-roarer, now kept for decoration.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"sorang nekeni","display_name":"Sorang sapana, silent old voice","image":{"full":"assets/objects/pd_plates/lehner1911_fig1_wabo_lanqua.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/pd_plates/thumbs/lehner1911_fig1_wabo_lanqua_thumb.jpg","alt":"Lehner’s drawing of the Wabo lanqua of Uwaung, shown twice with its cord extending from different points at the narrow end.","credit":"Stefan Lehner, 'Bukaua,' in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea III (1911), p. 411, Fig. 1; scan Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt","license":"Public Domain Mark 1.0 (Lehner in Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea III, 1911)","source_page":"https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/urn/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:2-328554","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Wabo lanqua, hung askew on its cord so it rasps.","pool_id":"auto-pd_plates--lehner1911_fig1_wabo_lanqua","last_modified":"2026-09-16"},"slug":"reigle1995-001-sorang-nekeni-nekgini-speaking-village"}