The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-021 - secondary catalog

Wanyanza (NE Congo)

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

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A wooden board burned with crosses and cross-hatching along its length, cord wound repeatedly near the perforated end: an African bullroarer of...
Representative image. A wooden board burned with crosses and cross-hatching along its length, cord wound repeatedly near the perforated end: an African bullroarer of the general type, not the Wanyanza instrument documented here. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Af1962-17-68) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: rhombe

The Wanyanza are little more than a name — which forest people the word once fixed is now undecided. Édouard de Jonghe listed them in 1936 among the Babali's neighbours who shared the same droning initiation rite, but no independent record shows their own hands whirling the slat. Here the roll-call outlived the people it named.

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

Soderberg 1956:184, quoting de Jonghe 1936:62-63
Object
Rhombe of the NE-Congo tribal-initiation complex (de Jonghe list).
Function
Listed by de Jonghe among the Babali-neighbour initiation-rhombe peoples.
Map confidence
low_medium - rough NE-Congo placement; ethnonym identification pending de Jonghe original
Source location
Soderberg pp. 184-185

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