The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-132 - museum specimen

Yoruba / Mitro

Benin - Mitro, Oueme Department - West Africa

Sacred / spirit

Digitized MKB collection card for the Yoruba Mitro bullroarer III 12821, recording its pierced-and-corded form and calling it an element of the...
Digitized MKB collection card for the Yoruba Mitro bullroarer III 12821, recording its pierced-and-corded form and calling it an element of the OLO fetish, the voice of Vodun. This is a source card, not an object photograph. Museum der Kulturen Basel, III 12821 CC BY 4.0 Image source

Source term: Schwirrholz

At Mitro, the bullroarer spoke as Vodun. Basel’s collection card calls it an “element of the OLO fetish”—the voice of the sacred power itself. Nine wooden blades entered the museum together; one survives with its doubled cotton cord still fixed to the narrow, notched end.

Element du fetiche OLO (voix du Vodun).

Element of the OLO fetish (voice of Vodun).

Museum der Kulturen Basel, digitized collection card for III 12821.
Object
Long lanceolate wooden bullroarer, 30 × 2.2 × 0.9 cm, pierced and notched at one end and notched at the other, with doubled cotton cord; one of nine Mitro examples, MKB III 12821–12829.
Function
Sacred instrument of OLO, sounded as the voice of Vodun.
Map confidence
high - Mitro village, Oueme Department, Benin (NGA geographic-name record).
Source location
MKB III 12821-12829 (detail verified for III 12821 and III 12822)

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