The Bullroarer Atlas

BAUMANN1932-001 - primary ethnography

Chokwe (Tsokwe)

N.O. Angola (Lunda - Moxico Chokwe heartland) - Southern Africa

Play / practical

Representative—not this record’s object: San Kalahari bullroarer (Weltmuseum Wien), shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own...
Representative—not this record’s object: San Kalahari bullroarer (Weltmuseum Wien), shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own object is available yet. Weltmuseum Wien (VO 85396) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

ndumbamwela German

Source term: Schwirrholz

ndumbamwela: Baumann's own gloss, "lion-roaring" (Loewenbruellen); he speculates, hedged as his own suspicion, that this may echo Mukanda circumcision-lodge lion symbolism found among the neighboring Baluba (whose Mukanda operator is called ntambo, "lion"; Tsokwe also has tambwe for lion), but this is not attested as this object's own function.

Hermann Baumann asked after bullroarers among the Tsokwe for a long time and got nothing, until a man, asked about children's games, produced a flat oval board pierced through the center and swung it around his head on a bark cord. He called it ndumbamwela -- lion-roaring -- and demonstrated it as a toy, plainly. Baumann wondered afterward whether the lion in its name once meant more, echoing the roaring that opens circumcision rites elsewhere in the region; among the Tsokwe he had only ever seen it played by children.

Das flache, ovale Brett hatte ein Loch in der Mitte und wurde mit einer Rindenschnur um den Kopf geschwungen. Er nannte es "ndumbamwela", d. h. Loewenbruellen.

The flat, oval board had a hole in the middle and was swung around the head on a bark cord. He called it "ndumbamwela," that is, lion-roaring.

Baumann 1932:13
Object
A flat, oval board pierced with a single central hole, swung around the head on a bark cord; demonstrated as a children's toy after Baumann's long, otherwise fruitless inquiry.
Function
Demonstrated to Baumann as a children's toy when he asked about play and playthings; the man who showed it called it ndumbamwela ("lion-roaring"). Baumann himself speculates the name may preserve a former link to Mukanda circumcision-lodge lion symbolism found among neighboring Baluba, but treats this as his own unconfirmed suspicion, not a recorded function of this object.
Map confidence
low - Anchored on Dundo, Lunda Norte -- the historic center of Chokwe material-culture documentation in NE Angola, where Baumann's own Angola collection was later catalogued -- as a named district-level anchor; not a claim that the demonstration happened there. Baumann's own text gives only "N.O. Angola."
Source location
p. 13, Abb. 19

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