Sirorata sova, the hooded initiates

sova

Source term: sova (Bullroarer)

At Sirorata, a Hunjara village in Papua New Guinea’s Oro Province, the bullroarer is called sova: three survive, slim blades of black palm, one still tied to its bark-fibre cord, another painted red at both ends. The general Orokaiva term for the instrument is umbubu, "a thin slat of palm-wood with a hole drilled through one end." F. E. Williams, the government anthropologist of the Orokaiva, recorded an initiation account from the Hunjara’s Koko people: boys and girls sat hooded in bark-cloth while men pulled trees down on long lianas and sounded the bull-roarers, notes running from the deepest bass to a piercing siren-like shriek — to the hooded children the voices of the embahi, spirits of the dead, who gabbled "Kambo, kambo, kambo!" — "Bite, bite, bite!" In the morning the initiates were shown the bull-roarers and flutes that had terrified them overnight. The name sova sits close to sovai, the Orokaiva word for those spirits of the dead — a nearness that goes unexplained.

The bull-roarer and the flute are esoteric objects in that they are never seen but only heard by the uninitiated.

F. E. Williams, Orokaiva Society (1930), p. 277.

Particulars

Object

UBC Museum of Anthropology sova, object type Bullroarer; object number 2623/2; place made Papua New Guinea: Oro, Sirorata. Two companion sova from the same donation, 2623/11 and 2623/12, are black-palm blades 38.2 and 31.1 cm long carved with zigzag and X designs; 2623/11 keeps its bark-fibre cord, and both ends of 2623/12 are painted red.

Function

An esoteric initiation instrument among the Orokaiva: never seen but only heard by the uninitiated, its booming passed off as the voice of the embahi, spirits of the dead; candidates, boys and girls alike, were brought into its secret.