The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-103 - museum specimen

Otomi

Mexico - Texcatepec, Veracruz - North America

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A dark wooden board wound thickly with fiber cord along most of its length — a North American bull-roarer held by the British Museum, shown for...
Representative image. A dark wooden board wound thickly with fiber cord along most of its length — a North American bull-roarer held by the British Museum, shown for the general form; not the Otomi tambour tournoyant from Texcatepec, Veracruz, documented here. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Am1937-0316-28-a) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

tambour tournoyant: French museum term for a "whirling/spinning drum" -- here a single-membrane friction drum on a bamboo frame, sounded by spinning it on its string. The collectors note the result is a buzz "comme celle du rhombe" (like a bullroarer), rather than the roar of a flat wooden blade.

Among the Otomi of Texcatepec in the Veracruz sierra, this whirling drum belonged to Holy Week. During the Paschal Triduum, when the church bells of Mesoamerica fall silent, indigenous communities take up rustic noisemakers in their place; the Quai Branly's collectors recorded this skin-and-bamboo instrument, spun on its cord to give a vibration "like that of a bullroarer," as used during Holy Week. It is a calendar-festival noise rite open to the community rather than a guarded cult, and the museum's note carries no gender restriction.

Utilisé pendant la semaine Sainte.

Used during Holy Week.

Quai Branly API object 273944
Object
Quai Branly object 71.1977.106.354.1-2: Otomi tambour tournoyant from Texcatepec.
Function
Quai Branly API records the Otomi whirling drum/bullroarer as used during Holy Week; no women language is recorded.
Map confidence
high - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
object record 273944 (Quai Branly API)

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