The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-020 - secondary catalog

Lokele, middle Congo River

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

Restricted

Plain wooden bull-roarer, middle Congo (Yalemba–Ligasa, DRC) — representative for the Lokele sphere; replaces a mislabeled Yoruba engraving....
Representative image. Plain wooden bull-roarer, middle Congo (Yalemba–Ligasa, DRC) — representative for the Lokele sphere; replaces a mislabeled Yoruba engraving. Cambridge MAA 1979.615. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge (1979.615) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: rhombe

The Lokele are the middle-Congo fishing people whose talking drums John Carrington spent decades learning to read — a language of pitch that carried news for miles along the river. Their bullroarer is a fainter thing: they surface only as one name among the forest neighbours in whom Édouard de Jonghe traced the Babali initiation rite, with no separate account of a Lokele roarer or how it was sounded.

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».

the bullroarer is tied to the tribal-initiation complex that "is found, with some variants, among the neighbours of the Babali: Bakumu, Babira, Wanyanza, Bangelima, Barundi, Bapopoi, Wagenia and Lokele."

Söderberg 1956:184–185, 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 - Lokele riverine country below Kisangani
Source location
Soderberg pp. 184-185; de Jonghe 1936 pp. 62-63

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