FRAZER1913-017 - ethnographic attestation
Bushongo / Bushoong
Democratic Republic of the Congo - Kuba - Kasai region - Central Africa
Restricted
Iphungula Bushongo (Bambala dialect-group, Kuba cluster); recorded in a French-language source
Among the western Bushongo of the Kuba kingdom, the bull-roarer was a thing of palm. Emil Torday, who spent 1907-09 in the Kasai for the British Museum, and his co-author T. A. Joyce recorded that the elders made it from very thin strips of palm-leaf rib tied to a cord; in the instrument survey of their 1910 monograph they define the planchette-bourdon plainly as an elongated rectangle of reed on the end of a string. During the Nkanda initiation the boys were kept in seclusion, considered impure, forbidden to be seen by women; at night the old men ringed the camp, raised the most supernatural cries they could, and whirled these strips, the sound imitating closely the howling of wild beasts. The official who presided, the Kananyenge, would visit the alarmed novices and, when they complained of ghosts walking in the dark, answer that boys who were impudent to everyone surely could not be afraid of ghosts. Torday also took down the tale the Bushongo told of its invention: a youth used to drink the day's palm-wine with his mother, leaving none for his father, until the father followed him to the wood and, hidden, swung a thin strip of wood on a string until the noise terrified the boy into dropping his calabashes and fleeing. The son begged forgiveness and never again neglected his father's share; from that day, the elders said, the bull-roarer was used at initiation to frighten the boys and teach them to respect their elders.
La nuit les vieillards entourent le camp, poussent les cris les plus surnaturels et font tourner des instruments consistant en lanières très minces faites de côtes de feuilles de palmier attachées à un fil (des planchettes-bourdon).
At night the old men surround the camp, utter the most supernatural cries, and whirl instruments consisting of very thin strips made from the ribs of palm leaves attached to a string (bull-roarers).
Torday & Joyce 1910, Les Bushongo, p. 82
- Function
- Restricted men's initiation instrument sounded at night to create supernatural voices and frighten novices.
- Map confidence
- medium - Mushenge/Nsheng Kuba-Kasai regional anchor; Frazer's note gives no ceremony locality
- Source location
- Torday and Joyce 1910, pp. 82, 240; Frazer 1913 Balder p. 229 n. 2 preserves the earlier lead.
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women