PNG1 - ethnographic attestation
Vanimo (incl. Warimo, Wutung and Yako)
Papua New Guinea - West Sepik - Oceania - Sahul
Function not recorded
diwana = Vanimo sacred flute, named in the origin myth from diwa, "early morning," the time the first flute was cut; mumona = Vanimo slit-gong.
At the far northwestern corner of New Guinea, where the Sko-speaking villages of Warimo, Wutung and Yako run up to the Indonesian border, K. A. Gourlay's survey of the country's secret instruments records the Vanimo bullroarer, sacred flute and slit-gong all in use. The instrument that carries the cult here, though, is the flute: paired clan voices Gourlay calls "dual spirits," revealed to Vanimo youths shut in the men's house at puberty, and carried into the bush to be blown before fights, at harvest and on the hunt. The bullroarer is logged only as present, on the bare instrument list E. W. P. Chinnery compiled as the administration's government anthropologist; what the Vanimo did with their bullroarer, as opposed to their flutes, no one wrote down.
Vanimo (A) flutes may be blown before fights or food harvest and on extensive hunts are taken into the bush and blown to help the hunt (Thomas 1941: 185). (Compare the use of the bullroarer among the Ngaing.)
K. A. Gourlay, Sound-producing instruments in traditional society (New Guinea Research Bulletin no. 60, ANU, 1975), p. 60, citing K. H. Thomas, Oceania 12 (1941): 185
- Object
- Bullroarer, sacred flute and slit-gong are all in use here.
- Function
- The bullroarer is present here; its use is not recorded (Gourlay 1975).
- Map confidence
- high - Village or district coordinate for the named people.
- Source location
Page references
Table 1, row 1 (West Sepik no.1); initiation revelation pp.50-52; dual-spirit flutes p.54; Vanimo flute myth pp.89-90; flute hunt/harvest use p.60; bibliography (Chinnery n.d. A:48-9; Thomas 1941:184, in Oceania 12(2):163-86)