No. MOIYA1983-001
Ngbaka minagende (Gemena) vukuma
Democratic Republic of the Congo · Gemena, Sud-Ubangi (then Équateur Region) · Central Africa
Restricted
Vukuma
Vukuma: the Ngbaka name for the wooden plaque whirled in the circumcision camp.
Before an Ngbaka boy reached the knife, he had to pass through life, sickness, and death. Elders beat him between two hedges; hidden men made the animal-bodied ancestor Ya lunge from behind skins; then he was circumcised on an altar of branches from the tree used to bury the dead. Ya kept crying through the novices’ seclusion—but now the ancestor’s voice came from the vukuma, a wooden plaque whirled on a cord until it gave its strange hum.
C'est la voix des mânes.
It is the voice of the ancestral spirits.
Moiya, 'La circoncision chez les Ngbaka' (1983), p. 21
Particulars
- Object
- Small wooden bullroarer with cord and stick handle; the regional Sud-Ubangi account describes an oval tablet of kúlà or gbéákùbù (Guarea laurentii) wood swung on a cord.
- Function
- Circumcision-camp voice of the ancestor Ya and the ancestral spirits.
Source
Katumba Ndadua Beya Moiya, 'La circoncision chez les Ngbaka,' África 6 (1983): 3-33, at pp. 6, 16 and 21; Jean Omasombo Tshonda (dir.), République démocratique du Congo: Sud-Ubangi (Tervuren: MRAC, 2013), pp. 134-135