MUS2026-146 - ethnographic attestation
Ngiemboon / Bamougong
Cameroon - West Region - Bamboutos - Bamougong (Batcham district) - Central Africa
Restricted
màndelevûm nkyɛ̀ English / French
Source term: bullroarer / rhombe
mandelevum nkye: Ngiemboon term printed for the bullroarer; source distinguishes it from mandelevum/manduavum, a children's spinning-disc.
In Bamougong, the màndelevûm nkyɛ̀ was a flat wooden plaque sent circling overhead on a cord until it roared — an instrument of the Ngiemboon secret societies. The linguist Roger Blench, who photographed its severe, stripped-down form, caught the name's fine print too: màndelevûm alone is a spinning-disc any child may play with; only with nkyɛ̀ attached does the word name the plaque that belonged to the societies.
Bullroarer used for secret societies.
Roger Blench, Ngiemboon musical instruments (2009), p. 6.
- Object
- Flat wooden plaque suspended from a cord and whirled through the air.
- Function
- Used by Ngiemboon secret societies.
- Map confidence
- medium - Bamougong populated-place coordinate. The source says the Ngiemboon list was made in Mbouda and Bamougong; this is a fieldwork-community anchor, not a specimen findspot.
- Source location
- Blench 2009, p. 6; Blench Cameroun guide, p. 38 / Photo 82