The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-084 - museum specimen

Matsigenka bull-roarer (museum)

Peru - Urubamba River, Ucayali - South America

Sacred / spirit

Child’s red-stained wooden rhombe from the Rio Urubamba, accession 71.1980.61.49.
Child’s red-stained wooden rhombe from the Rio Urubamba, accession 71.1980.61.49. Image source
Its companion child's rhombe from the same Urubamba accession, the cord now lost (71.1980.61.50).
Its companion child's rhombe from the same Urubamba accession, the cord now lost (71.1980.61.50). Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

rhombe (French): bullroarer.

Pour enfant - 'for a child': two of the small red-stained rhombes that came out of Matsigenka country on the Rio Urubamba carry that bare note, one still trailing its long knotted cord. The ethnographer who collected them, France-Marie Renard-Casevitz, supplies the other half of the story: children's roarers belong to the daytime. The sacred ones are nocturnal - engraved with signs taught by the Master of Thunder and his creature the jaguar, they swell in the dark until the great ocellated cats come running to fight beside the shaman. One word, sangenari, names both the engraved signs and the jaguar whose coat wears them.

...de grands fauves oceles qui accourent aider le chaman allie quand les grondements du rhombe, semblables a la voix du maitre du tonnerre, s'enflent dans la nuit. Et ce rhombe a l'appel puissant incarne lui aussi sa voix dans les signes graves sur son corps.

...great ocellated beasts that come running to help the allied shaman when the rumblings of the rhombe, like the voice of the Master of Thunder, swell in the night. And this rhombe of the mighty call likewise embodies his voice in the signs engraved on its body.

France-Marie Renard-Casevitz, 'Inscriptions. Un aspect du symbolisme matsiguenga,' Journal de la Societe des Americanistes 67 (1980), printed p. 263
Object
Quai Branly object 71.1980.61.48: Rhombe of the Matsigenga, Rio Urubamba, red wood. Two companion rhombes from the same accession, 71.1980.61.49 (21 × 4 × 1.5 cm) and 71.1980.61.50 (22.5 × 3.5 × 1.5 cm), are slender red-stained blades cataloged pour enfant — made for a child; .49 keeps its long single cord.
Function
The roarer's rumble is the voice of the Master of Thunder: swelling in the night, it summons the great ocellated jaguars to the aid of the allied shaman in his fight against the powers of evil. The instrument carries incised signs that embody that same voice - sangenari names at once the sign repertoire and the ocellated jaguar itself. Sacred roarers are nocturnal; there are others that are children's daytime toys, which is exactly what the two companion pieces in this accession are.
Map confidence
high - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
Page references

object record 185043 (Quai Branly catalogue), inv. 71.1980.61.48

View source Open this point on the interactive map