EXH2026-042 - secondary catalog
Mayogo (mbirimbiri)
Democratic Republic of the Congo - NE Congo - Central Africa
Function not recorded
mbirimbiri English
Source term: bullroarer (New Grove cross-entry)
mbirimbiri: the recorded Mayogo (and Bangba) name for the bullroarer.
Etymology. An onomatopoeic name: the reduplicated word imitates the instrument's whirring, roaring sound. The Bangba use mbirimbiri too. The source offers no word-for-word decomposition. (medium confidence)
Say it aloud and you hear the thing itself: mbirimbiri, a reduplicated whirr of a word that the Mayogo and their Bangba neighbours, forest people of the northeastern Congo's Uele country, gave to the spun blade of wood whose drone it imitates. The name is what came down to us. Collectors carried off the sound-word but not the scene around it: who swung the roarer, whose ears it was meant for, and what its voice was made to summon among the Mayogo went unrecorded.
mbirimbiri
K. A. Gourlay, 'Bullroarer,' Grove Music Online (after F. J. de Hen, 1960).
- Object
- Bullroarer; recorded Mayogo name mbirimbiri.
- Function
- The Mayogo name for the bullroarer is recorded; no use is described.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - Mayogo country, Uele
- Source location
Page references
New Grove / Grove, Mayogo entry (term mbirimbiri)