Bembe (Babembe)

Source term: rhombe

Among the Bembe of the Mouyondzi plateau in Congo-Brazzaville, the missionary-ethnographer Bertil Söderberg of the Swedish Evangelical Mission found the bullroarer reduced to a children's plaything, and he located its lingering power in something purely mechanical: the whirling blade, swinging wide or flying loose from its cord, could strike anyone standing near. He photographed a Bembe man at Mouyondzi holding a simple rhombe. Söderberg suspected the instrument had once served more widely as a secret object tied to initiation rites before becoming a toy, noting that the Teke had formerly used it at circumcision and that elsewhere in Africa its sound stood for the voice of an animal bush-spirit or an ancestor. He set the Bembe case beside John Weeks's report from the Kongo at San Salvador, where women, men and children covered their faces as a twirler approached, not, in Weeks's reading, out of awe but from fear of the many accidents caused by bullroarers coming off their strings and flying into bystanders' faces.

Le fait que le rhombe a encore dans ces régions un certain effet terrifiant s'explique par ce que, le joueur le faisant tourner, l'instrument peut atteindre les personnes se trouvant à proximité. J'ai pu le constater chez les Bembe.

The fact that the bullroarer still has a certain terrifying effect in these regions is explained by the player making it spin, so that the instrument can strike the people standing nearby. I was able to observe this myself among the Bembe.

Söderberg 1956:185

Particulars

Object

Rhombe (thin whirling blade on a cord).

Function

Children's toy, still feared because the spinning blade can strike bystanders.