HAUMANT1929-001 - ethnographic attestation
The buffalo's bellow that announces Dyoro
Burkina Faso - Lobi country on the Black Volta (Gaoua, Batié), Upper Volta - West Africa
Restricted
Source term: rhombe
Every seven years, in the dry season, the Lobi take their children down to the Black Volta to be initiated, boys and girls together. On the eve of the march the initiates shout at them: "You will see, he is waiting for you." At night, at regular intervals, something bellows in the dark, a lion roaring or a buffalo lowing, a sound none of them has ever heard. Lying under mats with their eyes shut, the novices are struck with holy fear, for it announces the approach of Dyoro, a power of the Earth. The rite is a death and a rebirth: the uninitiated child dies, and a new person comes back with a new name. Only at the very end are the boys shown what makes the sound, and no woman may ever see it.
Est-ce un lion qui rugit ou un buffle qui beugle, on ne le sait mais c'est un bruit qu'aucun des jeunes ici rassemblés n'a jamais entendu.
Is it a lion roaring or a buffalo bellowing? No one knows, but it is a sound none of the young people gathered here has ever heard.
Tô Joseph-Antoine Kambou, « Histoire d'un rite de passage : le jɔrɔ lobi » (1993), p. 363
- Object
- A short blade pierced at one end and whirled overhead on a string, of wood or, most often, a flat iron plate 20–30 cm long and 5 cm wide.
- Function
- Sounded at night through the seven-yearly Dyoro (jɔrɔ) initiation as the approach of the god; shown to the boys only at the rite's end and never to women.
- Source
- Jean-Camille Haumant, Les Lobi et leur coutume (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1929), pp. 132–134, quoting Henri Labouret
- Source location
Page references
Haumant pp. 132–133 and n. 2, p. 134 n. 1; Kambou pp. 361–363, 366 (drawing p. 363)
- Source confidence
- high
- Location note
- Gaoua, chief town of Lobi country; the rite is held on the banks of the Black Volta, its main centres at Batié-Nord and Nako about 30–50 km east and north.
Regions: Africa · West Africa
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Death and rebirth
- Forbidden to women