The Bullroarer Atlas

AKAKONIN2008-001 - ethnographic attestation

Gban (Gagou), departement d'Oume

Departement d'Oume, centre-ouest Cote d'Ivoire - West Africa

Sacred / spirit

A black-painted wooden helmet mask from the Baule/Guro bonu amuin sacred complex of the peoples just east of the Gban — heavy horns arched over...
Representative image. A black-painted wooden helmet mask from the Baule/Guro bonu amuin sacred complex of the peoples just east of the Gban — heavy horns arched over red-lined slit eyes and a toothed red muzzle; shown in place of the instrument itself, as no Gban wroum wroum has been photographed in any public collection. Smithsonian NMNH, Department of Anthropology, E435357 (gift of Allen and Barbara Davis) Image source

wroum wroum French

Source term: wroum wroum / rhombe

wroum wroum (Gban/Gagou, onomatopoeic) - the rhombe: a ~30 cm slat of bamboo, wood, or occasionally metal on a single cord, whirled in a vertical plane; a children's bird-scaring field guardian.

Among the Gban - the Gagou of the forest country around Oume in central-western Cote d'Ivoire - the bullroarer belongs to children. They call it wroum wroum, after its sound: a slat of bamboo or wood about thirty centimeters long, tied to a cord and wheeled overhead in a vertical circle until it drones. Its work is the seed crop. Swung at the field's edge, it is a scarecrow of pure noise, driving off the birds and small animals that dig up new plantings. The ethnomusicologists who documented it, Aka Konin and Guiraud Gustave, noted the reversal outright: in most societies the whirring rhombe is the voice of a god, a spirit, an ancestor, or a mask - here it guards the farm, in the hands of a child.

Contrairement a la plupart des societes ou le rhombe exprime la voix d'un etre surnaturel (dieu, esprit, ancetre, masque), en pays gban, l'instrument se trouve entre les mains des enfants qui l'utilisent comme epouvantail contre les oiseaux et les petits animaux qui menacent les semences.

Unlike most societies, where the rhombe expresses the voice of a supernatural being (god, spirit, ancestor, mask), in Gban country the instrument is in the hands of children, who use it as a scarecrow against the birds and small animals that threaten the seed crops.

Aka Konin & Guiraud, Les instruments de musique gban (MRAC, 2008), pp. 27-28.
Object
Slat of bamboo or wood, sometimes metal, about 30 cm long, attached at one end to a cord; the holder whirls it in a vertical plane.
Function
Children's crop-guarding noisemaker: swung as a scarecrow against birds and small animals threatening the seed crops. Aka Konin and Guiraud contrast this explicitly with the usual pattern in which the rhombe voices a god, spirit, ancestor, or mask - in Gban country it is in children's hands.
Map confidence
medium_high - Oume town, centre of the fieldwork departement; villages named but the attestation is departement-wide
Source location
Aka Konin & Guiraud 2008, pp. 27-28

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