EXH2026-013 - ethnographic attestation
Bembe (Babembe, Congo-Brazzaville)
Republic of the Congo - Bouenza - Mouyondzi plateau (Lower-Congo cluster) - Central Africa
Play / practical
Source term: rhombe
Among the Bembe of the Mouyondzi plateau in Congo-Brazzaville, the missionary-ethnographer Bertil Soderberg 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 says he confirmed this himself among the Bembe, and he photographed a Bembe man at Mouyondzi holding a simple rhombe. Soderberg suspected the instrument had once served more widely as a secret object tied to initiation rites before becoming a toy, noting that the Teke were said to have 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.
Soderberg 1956:185
- Object
- Rhombe (thin whirling blade on a cord).
- Function
- Children's toy with a frightening effect (the whirling blade can strike bystanders) — Soderberg's own field observation; possible former secret/initiation use in the region.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Bembe country, Bouenza/Mouyondzi area
- Source location
- p. 185 + plate E XVII, 60
- Toy / secular survival