MUS2026-103 - museum specimen
Otomi bull-roarer (museum)
Mexico - Texcatepec, Veracruz - North America
Play / practical
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
Page references
object record 273944 (Quai Branly API)
- Toy / secular survival