MUS2026-110 - museum specimen
Nias bull-roarer (museum)
Indonesia - Lafau, Nias Island - Southeast Asia
Play / practical
riwi-riwi löchö English
Source term: bull-roarer
riwi-riwi löchö: Nias name of the bullroarer and of the whizzing bow (Kunst, Music in Nias, 1939, p. 72); riwi-riwi is a cricket or chirping insect of the dry season.
A bull-roarer collected from the Nias people at Lafau, on the island of Nias off the western coast of Sumatra, now held by the Smithsonian. The record carries the object and its origin but no account of how it was used.
- Object
- Bull-roarer of the Nias, Smithsonian (NMNH/NMAI).
- Function
- Not recorded for this object. The Nias instrument is named riwi-riwi löchö after a dry-season chirping insect, and Kunst describes it as a children's toy whose magical function — the imitation of ghostly voices — has lapsed.
- Map confidence
- medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
- Source location
Page references
nmnhanthropology_8364793 / ark:/65665/3038a4bb8-2300-41e8-9496-88f2f48ac5d2
- Toy / secular survival