EXH2026-052 - ethnographic attestation
Ende, Flores (jata)
Indonesia - Central Ende region, Flores - Southeast Asia
Function not recorded
jata English
Source term: jata (bullroarer)
jata — the Ende name for the bullroarer and also for the distinct whizzing bow. In central Flores jata means Brahminy kite, not snake; the Lio word for snake is nipa.
In Ende, boys swung the little bamboo jata while girls played a different whizzing bow of coconut leaf. The jata went into the fields to call rain. Farther east among the Lio, its sound meant danger: children were warned that the noise resembled a poisonous snake moving—and might bring the real animal near.
The bull-roarer is met with in Central-Flores, Endé, where it is called jata. It consists of a flat piece of bamboo about 12 cm long and 2 cm wide. A hole is pierced at one end, and a length of cord introduced. When this piece of bamboo is swung round on the cord it makes a whizzing or buzzing sound.
Jaap Kunst, Music in Flores (1942), p. 158
- Object
- A flat bamboo blade about 12 × 2 cm, pierced at one end for a cord and swung to make a whizzing or buzzing sound.
- Function
- Played by boys and swung in fields to call rain. Among the Lio, children were warned that its snake-like sound might draw real snakes.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - central Ende, Flores
- Source location
Page references
Kunst 1942, pp. 158-159 (sections LIII-LIV); Bos 1999, p. 44 and p. 64 n. 99; New Grove (1984) II:323; Grove 2nd ed. (2014) III:69-70 and III:780
- Snake-linked