The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-020 - museum specimen

Matapu, the fish spirit of the pequi festival

Brazil - Upper Xingu, Mato Grosso - South America

Restricted

Wauja matapu painted with interlocking black diamonds and chevrons.
Wauja matapu painted with interlocking black diamonds and chevrons. Image source
Ajoukuma Wauja's supernatural matapu-kuma: fish-spirit blade, cord, and long whirling pole.
Ajoukuma Wauja's supernatural matapu-kuma: fish-spirit blade, cord, and long whirling pole. · CC BY 4.0 Image source
Wauja fish-spirit matapu for the Piqui festival, accession 71.1971.43.104.
Wauja fish-spirit matapu for the Piqui festival, accession 71.1971.43.104. Image source
Second fish-spirit matapu of the Wauja Piqui pair, accession 71.1971.43.105.
Second fish-spirit matapu of the Wauja Piqui pair, accession 71.1971.43.105. Image source

matapu / aripe Portuguese / French / English

Source term: bull-roarer

matapu: the Wauja bullroarer, itself an apapaatae (supernatural being) and not merely a spirit's instrument; sexed male or female. matapu-kumã: the supernatural or prototypical bullroarer represented as a fish spirit. aripe: 'grandfather', the smallest roarer of the set, who in his song wants only to eat pequi uncooked. mulu-mulu: boys' miniature roarers. Alapaga-kuma: chief of the roarers.

During the pequi festival, Wauja performers carry fish-shaped matapu from the village centre to the houses of the guardian-spirit masters and spin them before each house. The painted blades embody fish spirits, made in male-and-female pairs — a smaller one is aripe, 'grandfather,' and miniatures are whittled for children — while women stay indoors, forbidden to see them turning, the men who spin them painted with temepé-aná, the anaconda motif. Wauja myth remembers an earlier age when women owned the sacred kawoka flutes, before the matapu helped drive them off and men took the instruments. The matapu's songs demand porridge and fish; the supernatural prototype, matapu-kumã, is itself a fish spirit.

As mulheres ficam presas dentro de casa, pois não lhes é permitido ver o matapu em movimento.

The women stay shut inside the house, for they are not permitted to see the matapu in movement.

Mello, Música e Mito entre os Wauja do Alto Xingu (Diss., UFSC, 1999:142)
Object
Flat wooden fish-shaped bullroarers, normally made in male-female pairs, 40–70 cm long, painted for the fish represented and tied by cord to a pole about two metres long; NMAI 25/4970 is a 63.5 × 11 × 0.4 cm Wauja example with one terminal hole and surviving cord. Quai Branly 71.1971.43.104 and 71.1971.43.105 are a Wauja pair from the Upper Xingu (43.5 × 9 × 1 and 45 × 8.5 × 1 cm, wood with polychrome painting), each made for the Piqui festival and representing a fish spirit; .104 keeps its twisted-fibre cord, .105 a twist of red fibre at the tail slot.
Function
Restricted Wauja instrument of the pequi-harvest cycle; during the celebration performers carry matapu to guardian-spirit masters' houses and spin them before each house while women remain indoors.
Map confidence
medium_high - Piyulaga village used as a representative modern Wauja community anchor. Ball's pp. 105–106 matapu passage does not name the village, and none of the pictured museum objects is localized there.
Source location
Page references

National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) | Ball 2011:105–106; Barcelos Neto 2021:11–12, fig. 9; NMAI 25/4970; Quai Branly 170656/170657; Coelho 1991/92 (BSSA 55/56): 37-56, esp. 39-42, 45, 52-53, 56

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