The Bullroarer Atlas

BATCH4-015 - ethnographic attestation

G/wi and G//ana gíg/ù children's bullroarer

Botswana - Central Kalahari Reserve - Southern Africa

Play / practical

G/wi–G//ana gig/u with handle, tether, and feather-tipped rotor.
Representative — not this record’s object. · G/wi–G//ana gig/u with handle, tether, and feather-tipped rotor. · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source
San wooden bullroarer from Omaheke/Oas in the Kalahari.
Representative — not this record’s object. · San wooden bullroarer from Omaheke/Oas in the Kalahari. · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source
A G/wi g/ang/an from the Central Kalahari — bowed handle, leather lace, feather-tipped rotor.
A G/wi g/ang/an from the Central Kalahari — bowed handle, leather lace, feather-tipped rotor. Image source

gíg/ù English

Source term: bull-roarer

gíg/ù: Nurse's G/wi-G//ana name for the feather-bladed bullroarer, with high tone on the i. MEG records the independent vernacular spelling g/ang/an (ETHMU 040238).

A carefully trimmed korhaan tail feather finished the little gíg/ù. G/wi and G//ana boys whirled its leather-tethered rotor in changing rhythms while children of both sexes clapped, hummed, or sang. The adults found G. T. Nurse's wish to buy one ridiculous: these were children's things, though men made them. Nurse counted the feather-bladed roarer among the two distinctly San instruments he encountered in the Central Kalahari, a toy whose buzz did not merely make noise but drove the rhythm of a group of young voices.

A bull-roarer ... was played only by young boys. It was capable of being whirled around in several different rhythms.

Nurse, African Music 5.2 (1972), p. 26.
Object
A slender 30 cm handle with about 5 cm of free leather lace and a thinner 15 cm rotor tipped with a carefully trimmed korhaan tail feather.
Function
A boys' rhythmic toy whose buzz accompanied clapping songs sung or hummed by children of both sexes; men made the instruments for children.
Map confidence
medium_high - Representative midpoint of the Central Kalahari Reserve bounds; Nurse maps the communities to the reserve but gives no camp coordinate.
Source location
Nurse 1972:26, fig. 4

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