The Bullroarer Atlas

No. EXH2026-050

Korana burubush, swung by its cord

South Africa · Middle Orange River (!Kora country) · Southern Africa

Play / practical

Tapering wooden blade with a painted zigzag border and bound cord.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Tapering wooden blade with a painted zigzag border and bound cord. Image source

burubush

Source term: burubush (bull-roarer)

burubush — Korana (!Kora Khoekhoe) name for the bull-roarer.

A Korana boy at Bloemhof held the cord itself as he whirled his bullroarer. Kirby photographed him with the instrument: a crudely made blade, its string left free of the handle used on the other roarers he illustrated. The Korana called it burubush, a name whose rolling sound has close companions in the seburuburu of the Tswana and the sevuruvuru of the Sotho.

There are to-day, so far as I can discover, no rituals in which the instrument is used, and no taboos regarding its employment... For the most part it is nowadays looked upon as a child's toy.

P. R. Kirby, The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa (1934; 3rd ed. 2013), "Bull-Roarers and Spinning-Disks" (ch. 4), p. 98

Particulars

Object
A crudely made bull-roarer swung by its cord alone, with no handle; Kirby photographed the Korana boy who owned it holding the instrument.
Function
A boy’s plaything; Kirby observed it in use at Bloemhof.

Sources

  1. Percival R. Kirby, “Bull-Roarers and Spinning-Disks,” in The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa (1934; 3rd ed., Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2013), pp. 98–103, figs. 4.2 no. 7 and 4.4 View · archived
  2. Percival R. Kirby, Bantu Studies VI(2) (1932), p. 195

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