BaAka roarer inside the elanda dance

Source term: bull-roarer

On a February afternoon in 1987, at the BaAka camp of Kenyé in the forests of the southwestern Central African Republic, Louis Sarno's tape recorder caught a bullroarer at work in the middle of the elanda, the teenagers' dance: men and women singing in interlocking polyphony, clapping woven against clapping, the roarer whirring in intermittently at the start — and later a burst of it answered by a cheer. Sarno, the American who spent thirty years among the BaAka recording their music, gave the tape with a thousand hours more to the Pitt Rivers Museum; here the instrument survives not as an object in a case but as a sound inside the music.

men and women singing polyphony, interlocking polyphonic clapping, bullroarer being used intermittently at the start... bullroarer and cheer

Pitt Rivers Museum sound archive, Louis Sarno DAT #308 (1997.21.2.308), track notes 9-10, elanda at Kenyé, 27 February 1987

Particulars

Object

Louis Sarno DAT #308 (PRM 1997.21.2.308), 124 minutes of BaAka music and soundscapes; the track notes for the elanda of 27 February 1987 at Kenyé record a bullroarer sounded during the dance (tracks 9-10).

Function

Sounded in the elanda, the teenagers' dance: Sarno's tape catches the bullroarer whirring intermittently at the start of the polyphonic singing, and later a burst answered by a cheer — an open, mixed gathering, women singing throughout (PRM 1997.21.2.308, tracks 9-10, Kenyé, 27 Feb. 1987).