MUS2026-002 - museum specimen
Canela (Ramkokamekra)
Brazil - Maranhão (Sardinha) - South America
Restricted
pimpó Canela Ramkokamekrá (Timbira, Jê; Maranhão, Brazil)
Source term: bull-roarer
A bull-roarer of the Ramkokamekra-Canela of Maranhão, held in the Smithsonian's anthropology collections. Among the Eastern Timbira the instrument belonged to the men's initiation and was operated, Curt Nimuendajú found, almost exclusively by the initiates of the second ceremonial period: after nightfall and before daybreak the class leader would swing it, the booming passed from cell to cell as a check that no initiate had fallen asleep. By the time Nimuendajú worked among the Ramkokamekra in the years 1928 to 1936 the bull-roarer had become, in Otto Zerries's phrase, an instrument of comparative insignificance, though it had formerly counted for more at initiation, and more still among the neighboring Chakamekra, by then extinct as a separate tribe, whose specimens were larger and more carefully made than the Ramkokamekra ones.
Although it is now an instrument of comparative insignificance among the Ramkokamekran (Canella), it formerly played a greater part at initiation, especially among the nowadays extinct Chakamekra.
Zerries 1953, "The Bull-Roarer among South American Indians," Revista do Museu Paulista, n.s. vol. VII:294
- Object
- Bull-roarer of the Canela (Ramkokamekra), in the collection of Smithsonian NMNH (NMNH Anthropology).
- Function
- Canela/Ramkokamekra bull-roarer formerly played a greater part in initiation and was operated by initiates.
- Map confidence
- medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
- Source location
- NMNH Anthropology
- Initiation rite