MUS2026-020 - museum specimen
Wauja (Waurá)
Brazil - Upper Xingu, Mato Grosso - South America
Restricted
matapu / aripe English
Source term: bull-roarer
At Piyulaga, 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 — and they speak through the pequi-harvest cycle while the women stay indoors, forbidden to see them turning. Wauja myth remembers an earlier age when the women owned the sacred kawoka flutes, before the matapu helped drive them off and the men took the instruments. Asked whether it was really a musical instrument, the Wauja said it was, 'for the matapu is saying that it wants porridge, that it wants fish, just like in the song.'
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.
- Function
- Restricted Wauja instrument of the pequi-harvest cycle; at Piyulaga performers carry matapu to guardian-spirit masters' houses and spin them before each house while women remain indoors.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Piyulaga village, the Wauja community and ritual setting directly described by Ball; not claimed as the NMAI object's collection site.
- Source location
- National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) | Ball 2011:105–106; Barcelos Neto 2021:11–12, fig. 9; NMAI 25/4970
- Forbidden to women
- Women-linked