The Bullroarer Atlas

No. EXH2026-042

Mayogo (mbirimbiri)

Democratic Republic of the Congo · NE Congo · Central Africa

Function not recorded

Fang evuntere from Amvam, Gabon, made before 1960: a broad, weathered wooden blade with a coarse cord tied at one end and small holes across its face.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Fang evuntere, a leaf-shaped wooden blade with cord, Gabon Image source

mbirimbiri

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.

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).

Particulars

Object
Bullroarer; recorded Mayogo name mbirimbiri.
Function
Not recorded.

Sources

  1. K. A. Gourlay, “Bullroarer,” Grove Music Online, Mayogo term mbirimbiri; after F. J. de Hen (1960)
  2. J.-S. Laurenty, La systématique des aérophones de l’Afrique centrale, Annales du MRAC, nouvelle série in-4°, Sciences humaines 7 (Tervuren: MRAC, 1974), via New Grove
  3. Ferdinand J. de Hen, Beitrag zur Kenntnis der Musikinstrumente aus Belgisch Kongo und Ruanda-Urundi (1960), via K. A. Gourlay, “Bullroarer,” Grove Music Online

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.