COURLANDER1960-001 - ethnographic attestation
Haitian von-von of the Rara bands
Haiti - Ouest department (Léogâne) - Caribbean - Antilles
Play / practical
von-von
Source term: von-von, or bull-roarer
von-von: the Haitian Creole name for the bullroarer.
When Mardi Gras ends, Haiti falls into Rara. For seven weekends, hundreds of bands with bamboo trumpets, conch horns and a "king" of their own move along the mountain trails, lighting their way after dark with torches and tiny oil lamps. On Good Friday weekend they pour into the towns, and Léogâne becomes a surging, trumpeting mass of country people. Among the noisemakers of those days is the von-von, a thin flat board whirled on a cord, heard beside the rara, the wooden ratchet that shares the festival's name.
Among the noisemakers heard mostly at the time of the Rara festival (usually on Good Friday) are the von-von, or bull-roarer—a thin flat piece of wood whirled on the end of a cord—and the rara, the common wooden ratchet.
Harold Courlander, The Drum and the Hoe (1960), p. 202
- Object
- A thin flat piece of wood whirled on the end of a cord.
- Function
- A noisemaker heard mostly during the Rara festival, usually on Good Friday, alongside the wooden ratchet.
- Source
- Harold Courlander, The Drum and the Hoe: Life and Lore of the Haitian People (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), pp. 106, 202, 361
- Source location
Page references
p. 202 (von-von); p. 361 (glossary); p. 106 (Rara)
- Source confidence
- low to medium
- Location note
- Léogâne, which Courlander names as a traditional Rara convocation centre of the south; he gives no locality for the von-von itself.
Regions: The Americas