The Bullroarer Atlas

GUNN1956-001 - ethnographic attestation

Kadara aka'a, the whirring of the returning dead

Nigeria - Kajuru District, Zaria Province (now Kajuru LGA, southern Kaduna State) - West Africa

Sacred / spirit

Representative—not this record’s object: a Gwari bamboo strip burned with a zigzag line.
Representative — not this record’s object. · a Gwari bamboo strip burned with a zigzag line. · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source
Gunn's page on aka'a: the bull-roarer whirs as the recalled spirit arrives.
Gunn's page on aka'a: the bull-roarer whirs as the recalled spirit arrives. Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

aka'a: the great annual memorial festival for the ancestors. ute: the ritual hut to which the relics are taken. ategburu: the clan associations of Kufana, organised around shared heirlooms that include the bull-roarer.

Once a year, at the great aka'a festival, the Kadara called their recently dead elders home. Each elder's relics, a strip of forehead skin and parings from both great toes wrapped in duiker hide, were carried to the ute ritual hut. Food and beer were laid out, and at the grave the spirit was told a meal was waiting. Then the bull-roarer whirred: the dead had arrived. The youngest son made the offerings and spoke to the spirit. It stayed six to eight weeks, while the wives of its clan were called to the ritual hut each night to wail, and then it was sent away to wait for a later aka'a, perhaps six years off.

When the sacrifices are made at the grave, the spirit of the deceased is told that food has been collected and is recalled for its first visit, its arrival being signalized by the whirring of the bull-roarer.

Gunn 1956:134, after M. G. Smith
Object
Bull-roarer; not described. One of the heirloom ritual possessions of the Kufana ategburu, kept with the trumpet, flutes and drums.
Function
At the aka'a memorial festival its whirring signals the arrival of a dead elder's spirit, recalled from the grave for its first visit home.
Source
Harold D. Gunn, Pagan Peoples of the Central Area of Northern Nigeria, Ethnographic Survey of Africa, Western Africa Part XII (London: International African Institute, 1956), pp. 134-135, after M. G. Smith
Source location
pp. 134-135
Source confidence
medium
Location note
Kufana, Kajuru LGA, Kaduna State (OSM/Nominatim administrative centroid); the Kufana ategburu are the community named for the ritual possessions.

Regions: Africa · West Africa

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