The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-088 - museum specimen

Fali

Cameroon - Africa

Sacred / spirit

A narrow flat wooden blade wound at its midpoint with cord — a Yoruba bull-roarer held by the Pitt Rivers Museum, shown for the general African...
Representative image. A narrow flat wooden blade wound at its midpoint with cord — a Yoruba bull-roarer held by the Pitt Rivers Museum, shown for the general African form; not the Fali rhombe, known locally as Uni, documented here. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (acc. 1926.91.21) Image source

Uni French

Source term: bull-roarer

Shaped like a spearhead of tamarind wood, its base pierced for a cord of twisted bean-vine, this hand-length roarer — uni to the Fali of Cameroon's northern hills — belongs to the boys, who swing it in July as the red millet begins to ripen and its drone rolls across the drying fields. Yet among the Fali the rhombe is a sacred thing too: in the mat-walled enclosures where the clan ancestors are honoured, roarers rest beside the clan masks and iron bracelets. Harvest plaything and shrine-voice, one form.

Rhombe, Bull-roarer mâle

Rhombe, male bull-roarer

Quai Branly API object 269126
Object
Quai Branly object 71.1938.46.295: Rhombe / male bull-roarer of the Fali, local name Uni.
Function
Quai Branly API records a Fali male bull-roarer, Uni, with a seasonal boys-play note tied to red millet ripening; no women restriction is recorded.
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
object record 269126 (Quai Branly API)

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