The Bullroarer Atlas

No. EVRARD1971-001

Tandroy vovo na tarimo

Androy, far south of Madagascar · Africa

Function not recorded

Red human figures labeled 1–8 across the rock face at Doring River shelter, Western Cape, South Africa; several have raised arms, with other red shapes nearby.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Doring River shelter, Western Cape, South Africa Image source

vovo na tarimo

Source term: rhombe

vovo na tarimo: Tandroy name recorded with the pair. In Malagasy vovo is the barking of a dog and na means 'or'; tarimo is not glossed. Compare Tanala tavovoka and Sakalava (ki)tambovo.

Vovo is the Malagasy word for a dog’s bark. The Tandroy of Madagascar’s parched far south cut this pair of roarers at Ambovombe from rotse wood: two oval blades, eighteen and nineteen centimetres long, each rounded at one end and pinched to a neck at the other, where a hole takes a cord twisted from two strands of sisal. The Tandroy take their name from the androy, a water-filled cactus that was the one plant fit to eat all year in the dry country between the Mandrare and Menarandra rivers.

Particulars

Object
A pair of oval blades of rotse wood, 19 and 18 cm long, about 4 cm wide and 0.7 cm thick; one end rounded, the other narrowed and pierced for a cord of twisted two-strand sisal.
Function
Not recorded.

Sources

  1. Dominique Evrard, Catalogue des collections ethnographiques du Musée de l’ORSTOM à Tananarive, Travaux et documents V (1971), p. 85 View
  2. Malagasy Dictionary and Encyclopedia, 'vovo' and 'Tandroy' View
  • SakalavaMadagascar · SW Madagascar, districts of Beroroha and Sakaraha · Play / practical
  • TanalaMadagascar · Eastern forest escarpment, Fianarantsoa (Ifanadiana-Ikongo) · Play / practical

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.