The Bullroarer Atlas

No. EXH2026-061

Sundanese (kekinciran)

Indonesia · Sundanese districts, West Java · Southeast Asia

Function not recorded

Schmeltz’s numbered comparative plate of carved boards, cords and spinning toys; figure 24 is the Javanese kitiran.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Schmeltz’s 1896 world plate; fig. 24 is a Javanese kitiran Public domain · Image source

kekinciran

Source term: kekinciran (bullroarer)

kekinciran: Sundanese (West Java) term for the bullroarer, from the kincir / kekincir root for a whirling or spinning device; recorded in the New Grove with a cross-reference to the Borneo "jata" bullroarer entry.

Its Sundanese name is built on kincir, to whirl — the word for a thing that spins. Swung on a cord through the districts of West Java, the kekinciran roared, yet the lexicographers who caught the word never set down the occasion: who whirled it, in what season, to summon spirits or to scare them. The dictionaries pass the name hand to hand, pointing across the sea to the Dayak roarer of Borneo, and hand down a whirling word emptied of its rite.

BULLROARER of the Sundanese districts of West Java. See JATA.

New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, s.v. "Kekinciran"

Particulars

Object
Bullroarer term/name-entry for the Sundanese: kekinciran.
Function
Not recorded.

Source

New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (1984), s.v. 'Kekinciran'

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