The Bullroarer Atlas

No. HAYS1986-008

Wojokeso roarer shown at septum-piercing

Papua New Guinea · Safeyoka · Ampale language orbit · Oceania · Sahul

Restricted

The Upper Watut Anga bullroarer, a dark wooden blade with bark-fibre cord wound around it and Blackwood’s 1937 tag attached.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Anga bullroarer with bark-fibre cord, collected on the Upper Watut in 1937. Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

Two things came open at once for a Wojokeso boy: the source of the roaring he had heard all his life, and the cartilage of his own nose. This was the southeastern corner of the Highlands, Angan-speaking country. Wojokeso men had transverse flutes as well, where several of their Angan neighbours had none — yet it was the roarer that was kept out of sight and then disclosed, at the moment the boy's face was changed for good. Hays takes the Wojokeso detail from Vida Chenoweth's survey of Papua New Guinea instruments.

bullroarers were the secret instrument revealed to young boys, in association with septum-piercing, in Kapau, Menya, and Wojokeso

Hays 1986:443 (Anthropos 81), citing Blackwood 1978:125–127; Simpson 1953:102–105; Chenoweth 1976:40, 45

Particulars

Object
A bullroarer kept secret from Wojokeso boys and revealed to them during initiation.
Function
The secret instrument revealed to young boys at initiation, in association with the piercing of the nasal septum.

Sources

  1. Terence E. Hays, 'Sacred Flutes, Fertility, and Growth in the Papua New Guinea Highlands,' Anthropos 81 (1986): 435-453, pp. 436, 443 View · archived
  2. Vida Chenoweth, Musical Instruments of Papua New Guinea (Ukarumpa: SIL, 1976), pp. 40, 45, cited in Hays (1986), p. 443
  3. Beatrice Blackwood, The Kukukuku of the Upper Watut (1978), pp. 125-127, cited in Hays (1986), p. 443
  4. Simpson (1953), pp. 102-105, cited in Hays (1986), p. 443

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