The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-096 - museum specimen

Toma

Guinea - Nzerekore - Africa

Restricted

A wooden blade bound tightly with dark fiber cord across its middle and pierced at one end — an African bull-roarer held by the British Museum,...
Representative image. A wooden blade bound tightly with dark fiber cord across its middle and pierced at one end — an African bull-roarer held by the British Museum, shown for the general form; not the Toma rhombe, known locally as guri, from Louma documented here. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Af1999-01-39) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Guri French

Source term: bull-roarer

Its roar was one voice of the Afwi — the great bush spirit whose "multiple voice, its secret incarnations" fills the Toma sacred forest, where the drum is forbidden and only the spirit may sound. Swung during initiations and the long forest retreat, this rhombe, called Guri, was made to be heard and never seen: women and the bilakoro, the uninitiated boys, were shut in the dark of their huts while the masks came out only to frighten them. Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau talked his way into that forest in 1953 to hear it.

usage pendant les initiations

use during initiations

Quai Branly API object 217063
Object
Quai Branly object 71.1933.40.188: Toma rhombe, local name Guri, from Louma.
Function
Quai Branly API records Toma Guri rhombe use during initiations and forest retreat; no women language is recorded.
Map confidence
high - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
object record 217063 (Quai Branly API)

View source Open this point on the interactive map