EXH2026-049 - secondary catalog
Moando area (Madang)
Papua New Guinea - Moando-Sprachgebiet, NE New Guinea (Madang hinterland) - Oceania
Function not recorded
Source term: bullroarers (McLean annotation)
Three voices carried through the inland hinterland behind Madang: the slit-gong's booming signal-code, relayed village to village; the paired bamboo flutes that cry as spirits; and the bullroarer whirling on its cord. A Divine Word missionary, Wilhelm Tranel, set all three side by side on a few pages of his 1952 field notes among the Moando-speaking people. But what the spinning blade summoned here — which rite it opened, who was forbidden to hear it — those brief lines never say, and no ethnographer went back to fill the silence.
slit-gong signals, spirit flutes, bullroarers
McLean, Annotated Bibliography of Oceanic Music and Dance, annotation to Tranel 1952, Anthropos 47:459-462
- Object
- Bullroarers among slit-gong signals and spirit flutes.
- Function
- McLean's bibliography annotates Tranel's Anthropos Moando article with slit-gong signals, spirit flutes, and bullroarers; local material supports occurrence only, not a checked ritual or gender claim.
- Map confidence
- medium - Madang hinterland (Hoeltker's Bogia-area fieldwork region), approximate
- Source location
Page references
Anthropos 47:459-462 via McLean annotation