The Bullroarer Atlas

MINE2026-082 - candidate identification

Kayan Umaq Lekan, Miau Baru

Indonesia - Miau Baru, Kongbeng, East Kutai Regency, East Kalimantan - Southeast Asia - Borneo

Function not recorded

A paired bamboo bull-roarer set from Flores — one board painted blue, the other left plain and drilled, joined by a long cord — representative...
Representative image. A paired bamboo bull-roarer set from Flores — one board painted blue, the other left plain and drilled, joined by a long cord — representative of the Indonesian bamboo type. No usable photograph of the Kayan Umaq Lekan buluq laluq could be found; Maceda's Miau Baru inventory names it only as a bull-roarer agitated by the wind. Tropenmuseum / Wereldmuseum, TMnr 5570-9 CC BY-SA 3.0 Image source

buluq laluq English

Source term: bull roarer

buluq laluq: the Kayan Umaq Lekan name Maceda records for the possible wind bullroarer; no translation is supplied.

Maceda heard about the buluq laluq at Miau Baru, a village founded in 1961 by Kayan Umaq Lekan migrants who had come down from the upper rivers, thirteen hundred people strong by his 1977 music workshop. His informants described it — 'a bull roarer agitated by the wind' — as an instrument of their own, listed apart from the pull-string clapper that guarded the rice fields, though no one played one for him. A 1979 project booklet confirms the name again as balu? lalu?. What the blade looked like, nobody recorded.

buluq laluq, a bull roarer agitated by the wind.

Jose Maceda, 'Report of a Music Workshop in East Kalimantan' (1978), p. 93.
Object
Wind-agitated sound-maker named buluq laluq and catalogued as a bullroarer; construction is not described.
Function
Sounded by the wind; its particular purpose is not recorded.
Map confidence
medium - Miau Baru village coordinate; Maceda names the community, not an individual performance site.
Source location
p. 93 (PDF p. 21)

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  • DyakIndonesia - Southwest Kalimantan / Borneo - Function not recorded
  • Ende (Flores)Indonesia - Central Ende region, Flores - Function not recorded
  • KanumIndonesia - South Papua (Merauke area) - Function not recorded
  • MentawaiIndonesia - Pagai Islands, Mentawai Islands - Function not recorded
  • Mombum (Komolom Island)Indonesia - Komolom Island (south of Yos Sudarso / Kolepom) - Function not recorded
  • NiasIndonesia - Lafau, Nias Island - Function not recorded