EXH2026-044 - secondary catalog
Amanga (Mangbetu cluster)
Democratic Republic of the Congo - NE Congo (atuamba belt) - Central Africa
Function not recorded
(atuamba type) English
Source term: bullroarer (New Grove cross-entry)
kundrukundru: the Amanga (Mangbetu-cluster) name for the bullroarer, an onomatopoeic term collected by de Hen and shared with the neighbouring Adoi, Andebogo and Andowi.
Etymology. An onomatopoeic name: the reduplicated word imitates the instrument's whirring roar. It is shared with the neighbouring Adoi, Andebogo and Andowi. The source gives no word-for-word decomposition. (medium confidence)
Among the Amanga, one of the small Mangbetu-cluster peoples of the north-eastern Congo, the bullroarer is called kundrukundru. The name was gathered by the organologist F.J. de Hen during his survey of Belgian-Congo instruments and is recorded in Grove, where it sits in a run of echoing Congo names whose very sound mimics the whirring instrument: the Adoi, Andebogo and Andowi call it kundrukundru too, the Bagbwa and Mamvu egburuburu, the Bangba mbirimbiri. The word is all that survives of the Amanga case. Whether their kundrukundru was a boys' plaything or, as among the Bapere who whirl the atuamba at circumcision, the hidden voice of an initiation cult, the recovered source does not say.
the varied names collected by de Hen suggest an onomatopoeic derivation, for example, the Adoi, Amanga, Andebogo and Andowi kundrukundru
K.A. Gourlay, "Bullroarer," Grove Music Online (after F.J. de Hen, Belgisch Kongo und Ruanda-Urundi, 1960)
- Object
- Bullroarer term/name-entry for the Amanga: kundrukundru.
- Function
- Source-checked bullroarer term/cross-entry for the Amanga; wider regional ritual context is not row-specific in the recovered evidence.
- Map confidence
- low - Mangbetu-area microgroup, approximate
- Source location
- Grove Music Online, "Bullroarer" (Gourlay), onomatopoeic-names paragraph after de Hen; primary: de Hen 1960 (Tervuren, 259 pp.)