No. PNG36
Rao
Papua New Guinea · Madang · Oceania · Sahul
Function not recorded
The Rao live inland from Hansa Bay along the Ramu and Keram rivers, in the villages around Annaberg in western Madang Province, and they knew all three of the region's restricted sounding instruments: the bullroarer, the side-blown sacred flute, and the slit-gong. Among the Rao it was the flute that belonged to initiation and its taboos between the sexes; the bullroarer and the slit-gong were known alongside it.
All are esoteric in the sense that the prerogative of playing them, at times even of seeing them, is restricted to one section of the community - initiated males.
Gourlay 1975:1 (Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society, New Guinea Research Bulletin 60)
Particulars
- Function
- Not recorded.
Source
K. A. Gourlay, Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society: A Study of Esoteric Instruments and Their Role in Male-Female Relations (New Guinea Research Bulletin 60; Canberra and Port Moresby, 1975), Table 1, entry 36 and fig. 1