The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-019 - secondary catalog

Wagenia (Genya), Kisangani rapids

Democratic Republic of the Congo - NE Congo (Babali initiation belt) - Central Africa

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A wooden board marked with scattered burned dashes, cord wound near one end: an African bullroarer of the general type, not the Wagenia (Genya)...
Representative image. A wooden board marked with scattered burned dashes, cord wound near one end: an African bullroarer of the general type, not the Wagenia (Genya) instrument from the Kisangani rapids documented here. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Af1962-17-69) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: rhombe

At Kisangani the Wagenia lash tall wooden tripods into the Boyoma (Stanley) Falls, wedging cone-shaped basket traps into the whitewater to haul fish from the roaring rapids — a craft handed down the male line for generations. These same falls-fishers stand in the belt of forest initiation that Édouard de Jonghe traced outward from the Babali: a complex found 'with some variations' among the Bakumu, Babira, Wagenia, Lokele and their neighbours, and the bullroarer is bound to it wherever it runs.

de Jonghe a souligné que le rhombe est lié au complexe d'initiation tribale qui «se rencontre avec quelques variantes chez les voisins des Babali: Bakumu, Babira, Wanyanza, Bangelima, Barundi, Bapopoi, Wagenia et Lokele».

de Jonghe stressed that the bullroarer is tied to the tribal-initiation complex which "is found, with some variations, among the neighbors of the Babali: Bakumu, Babira, Wanyanza, Bangelima, Barundi, Bapopoi, Wagenia, and Lokele."

Söderberg 1956:184, quoting de Jonghe 1936:62
Object
Rhombe of the NE-Congo tribal-initiation complex.
Function
Rhombe tied to the tribal initiation complex of the Babali and their neighbours (de Jonghe).
Map confidence
medium - Wagenia fisheries at Kisangani
Source location
Soderberg pp. 184-185; de Jonghe 1936 pp. 62-63

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