EXH2026-039 - secondary catalog
Zande (gilingwa)
Democratic Republic of the Congo - NE Congo - Central Africa
Function not recorded
gilingwa English
Source term: bullroarer (New Grove cross-entry)
gilingwa = the Zande (Azande) name for the bullroarer, recorded by F.J. de Hen (1960); unlike most Congo bullroarer names it is not onomatopoeic.
For the Zande of the north-eastern Congo the bullroarer survives in the record as a single word, gilingwa, gathered into F.J. de Hen's 1960 catalogue of Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi instruments. Grove's survey of these names notes that most are plainly onomatopoeic, echoing the whirring roar itself, but that the Zande term is one of the exceptions that does not. What the roar meant to the Zande, who might hear it, and whether it belonged to any rite goes unrecorded. The leopard-growl and circumcision secrecy often cited for Congo bullroarers attach to the neighbouring Kuma atuamba, a different instrument and a different people, and cannot be lent to the Zande here.
this pattern is not always followed, as with the Mbole inano, Nyali upa and Zande gilingwa
K.A. Gourlay, "Bullroarer," Grove Music Online, citing F.J. de Hen 1960
- Object
- Bullroarer, called gilingwa.
- Function
- The Zande name for the bullroarer is recorded; no use is described.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - Zande heartland, NE DRC (extends into S. Sudan/CAR)
- Source location
Page references
Grove Music Online "Bullroarer" (Gourlay), Central Africa naming section; primary: de Hen 1960 (Tervuren, 259 pp.)