The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-058 - secondary catalog

Nyali

Democratic Republic of the Congo - NE Congo (Bira borderlands) - Central Africa

Function not recorded

A South African bull-roarer from KwaZulu-Natal, a plain tapering board with its cord looped through one end, collected in the 1870s; shown for...
Representative image. A South African bull-roarer from KwaZulu-Natal, a plain tapering board with its cord looped through one end, collected in the 1870s; shown for the general African form, not the Nyali upa documented here. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (acc. 1980.1.1) Image source

Oupa English

Oupa: bullroarer term/name-entry for the Nyali in the recovered source trail.

A bullroarer named upa (also written oupa) is recorded for the Nyali, a small people of the Bira borderlands in the forests of northeastern Congo. The instrument and its name are documented in the Tervuren organological survey of Belgian Congo instruments, but that record does not preserve a Nyali account of how the bullroarer was sounded, who was permitted to see it, or whether it belonged to the region's forest-circumcision rites. Only the name is certain.

Oupa

New Grove / Grove bullroarer term or cross-entry, local audit locator in page_or_plate
Object
Bullroarer term/name-entry for the Nyali: Oupa.
Function
Source-checked bullroarer term/cross-entry for the Nyali; wider regional ritual context is not row-specific in the recovered evidence.
Map confidence
low_medium - Nyali country, Ituri
Source location
de Hen (1960), Belgisch-Kongo aerophones / Schwirrholz section (exact page not yet confirmed from the physical volume)

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