GRENAND1982-001 - historical text
Wajãpi ancestral rhombe, Oyapock-Amapá range
Brazil - Oyapock - Amapá and French Guiana - South America - Guianas
Sacred / spirit
Source term: rhombe; /kulumuli/ bamboo
rhombe is Grenand's French instrument term; /kulumuli/ names the bamboo material (Guadua latifolia, per Grenand's footnote).
Wayãpi myth remembers a missed eternity: after the creator Yaneya broke with humanity, the flood Ipolu remade a world where death is never natural and the forest belongs to the ayã spirits. In a story told by the grandmother Péicô at Trois Sauts in 1974, the hero Anilawa circled the village whirling a bamboo bullroarer until the mũmũ spirits answered, growling just as it did; he held one through jaguar, bushmaster and millipede shapes until it yielded kãyɨma ku'i, the flour that made warriors invisible. The magic is lost today, among a people Grenand calls 'warriors without a war.'
Il attacha un morceau de bambou /kulumuli/ à une ficelle pour appeler les esprits. Il parcourut le cercle du village en faisant tournoyer son rhombe.
He tied a piece of kulumuli bamboo to a string to call the spirits. He walked the circle of the village whirling his bullroarer.
Pierre Grenand, Ainsi parlaient nos ancêtres (1982), p. 386.
- Object
- A piece of kulumuli bamboo (Guadua latifolia) tied to a string and whirled.
- Function
- Whirled to call the spirits: in the ancestral story the shaman-hero Anilawa ties kulumuli bamboo to a cord and circles the village whirling his rhombe until the mũmũ spirits answer; Beaudet adds its historic place in the war complex. No access restriction is recorded, and by the late twentieth century the Wayãpi no longer made the instrument.
- Map confidence
- medium - Representative point inside the officially recognized Terra Indígena Waiãpi in Amapá; not a story or object locality.
- Source location
Page references
p. 386 (PDF p. 398); story frame p. 226 | Beaudet 1989:31
- Spirit voice
- Snake-linked