EXH2026-057 - secondary catalog
Mamvu (egburuburu / arumvurumvu)
Democratic Republic of the Congo - NE Congo (Bira borderlands) - Central Africa
Function not recorded
egburuburu / arumvurumvu English
Source term: bullroarer (Grove enumeration)
egburuburu / arumvu-rumvu: onomatopoeic Mamvu names for the bullroarer (the whirring sound), collected by F. J. de Hen.
Etymology. egburuburu and arumvu-rumvu are reduplicated, buzzing names that imitate the whirring roar of the spun bullroarer. (medium confidence)
The Mamvu are a Central Sudanic-speaking people of the Ituri forest country in northeastern Congo. Their bullroarer is recorded by name only: egburuburu, or arumvu-rumvu, both onomatopoeic words for the whirring blade. The name was collected in the field by the Belgian musicologist F. J. de Hen in the 1950s and entered the Grove dictionary as one of a cluster of such Congo bullroarer names. What the Mamvu themselves did with the instrument -- whether it spoke for a spirit, who could see it, whether it belonged to initiation -- the record does not say; the Grove article's talk of secrecy and circumcision is a general remark about Congo bullroarers, not a Mamvu observation. The instrument sits in the regional rhombe belt of the Ituri without a Mamvu-specific account of its use.
egburuburu / arumvu-rumvu
K. A. Gourlay, 'Bullroarer,' Grove Music Online (after F. J. de Hen, 1960).
- Object
- Bullroarer, called egburuburu.
- Function
- The Mamvu name for the bullroarer is recorded; no use is described.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - Mamvu country, NE DRC
- Source location
Page references
Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, s.v. "Bullroarer" (de Hen Congo name-list); de Hen 1960 (Tervuren), 171ff