The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-030 - museum specimen

Karbi bull-roarer (museum specimen)

Karbi Anglong, Assam - South Asia - Northeast India

Play / practical

The Karbi blade itself on its twisted cord (UEM46949); the museum catalogues it simply as a toy.
The Karbi blade itself on its twisted cord (UEM46949); the museum catalogues it simply as a toy. Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

"Brummer" is the Norwegian museum cataloguing term for a bullroarer/spun aerophone (cf. the Norwegian "hurre" for the same instrument).

The Oslo museum records this Karbi blade plainly as a toy: set spinning on its cord, it whirred at great speed simply for the sound it made. It comes from Karbi Anglong, the hill country of central Assam, and was used at Hamren, among a people whose unmarried young men once lived together in a village bachelors' house, the terang, tilling the fields side by side as a sworn work-club before marriage.

brummer

DigitaltMuseum record 0210213508051 / KHM Oslo UEM46949
Object
Karbi bull-roarer / brummer in Kulturhistorisk museum, Universitetet i Oslo (KHM Oslo UEM46949).
Function
The Oslo museum record designates the piece a toy and describes the mechanism: the wooden blade is set spinning at great speed on its cord.
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
KHM Oslo UEM46949

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