The Bullroarer Atlas

KUBIK1971-001 - ethnographic attestation

Luchazi ndumba mwelela at the genet-cat rite

Zambia - Kabompo District, North-Western Province, near the Angola border - South-Central Africa

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An Angolan bullroarer of 1937, from across the Luchazi border.
Representative — not this record’s object. · An Angolan bullroarer of 1937, from across the Luchazi border. · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

ndumba mwelela

Source term: Schwirrholz; bull-roarer

ndumba mwelela: Luchazi name of the mukanda bullroarer; ndumba = 'lion' across the Upper Zambezi mukanda belt (Chokwe ndumba mwela, Luvale ndumbamwelela, Ndembu ndumba mwila).

Luchazi boys went into the mukanda lodge to be circumcised and schooled in seclusion. When every boy's wound had healed came kulonda ntsimba, 'the climbing of the genet cat': the initiates were nimble as genets again, and the first stage of their schooling was over. The rite had its kukuwa songs, men's and women's choirs and solo singers over clapping sticks, leg rattles and a struck idiophone, and above them roared the ndumba mwelela, the bullroarer whose name calls up the lion. Its strange voice was meant to frighten the secluded boys.

Object
Bullroarer sounded in the mukanda lodge; its construction is not described.
Function
Sounded with the kukuwa songs at kulonda ntsimba, 'the climbing of the genet cat', the mukanda rite held when the circumcised boys' wounds have healed and marking the end of their first stage of seclusion; its strange sound frightens the secluded initiates.
Source
Gerhard Kubik, field recording 'Kukuwa: songs in the mukanda at the celebration of Kulonda ntsimba', Luchazi (Ngangela), North-Western Province, Zambia, 10 September 1971, Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences, B 17457 (session 19710910.M002), project 'Kubik: Zambia 1971'. Gerhard Kubik, Theory of African Music (Chicago: University of Chicago…
Source location
Page references

Phonogrammarchiv 19710910.M002 (B 17457); Kubik 2010 mukanda chapter (page unpinned); Bulletin ICUAER p. 95

Source confidence
medium
Location note
Chikenge, Kabompo District, Kubik's stated 1971 base; the kulonda ntsimba ceremonies he documented were at lodges at Chikenge, Mikula (Katuva river) and Sangombe, all within 20-30 km.

Regions: Africa · Southern Africa

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