The Bullroarer Atlas

PROUTEAUX1918-001 - ethnographic attestation

Two devils circling the square

Bouna, northeastern Côte d'Ivoire - West Africa

Restricted

Representative—not this record’s object: a Dogon veni, a wooden slat pierced at one end.
Representative — not this record’s object. · a Dogon veni, a wooden slat pierced at one end. Image source
Prouteaux, p. 44: the masked performers whirl their slats on doubled twine.
Prouteaux, p. 44: the masked performers whirl their slats on doubled twine. · Public domain Image source
Two 1914 views of a related Gbon being dressed at Bya, published as an analogue for Bouna’s unphotographed Sourado.
Two 1914 views of a related Gbon being dressed at Bya, published as an analogue for Bouna’s unphotographed Sourado. · Public domain Image source
Printed p. 47: the quickening gyration yields 'un son rude, semblable à celui d'une sirène irrégulière et très grave.'
Printed p. 47: the quickening gyration yields 'un son rude, semblable à celui d'une sirène irrégulière et très grave.' · Public domain Image source
Ligbi mask of the Gbain fire society, a sister masking society of Bondoukou — not the Gbon or Sourado of the Bouna rite.
Ligbi mask of the Gbain fire society, a sister masking society of Bondoukou — not the Gbon or Sourado of the Bouna rite. · CC BY 3.0 Image source

Source term: planchette / fléau

fléau: 'flail,' Prouteaux's own word for the whirling rig.

Night, in the town square at Bouna. Horns moan, drums race, a bell-ringer gallops in circles — and two towering masked figures, two great devils in the words of Prouteaux, who watched, round the square whirling slats on doubled twine. As the gyration quickens the sound turns rough: an irregular, very deep siren, a hoarse and furious bellow that swells, dies, and wakes again with the swing of the arm. Then the Sourado itself enters — a horned mountain of hemp fibre, mouth agape under the moon.

un son rude, semblable à celui d’une sirène irrégulière et très grave

a rough sound, like that of an irregular and very deep siren

Prouteaux 1918:47
Object
Wooden slats about twenty centimetres long and five wide, each suspended from roughly a metre of doubled twine; Prouteaux calls the rig a kind of fléau, a flail.
Function
Whirled by two masked performers circling the square at the Sourado's nocturnal entry; the quickening gyration made a rough, very deep siren-like bellow that joined the horns and drums.
Source
M. Prouteaux, 'Sur certains rites magico-religieux de la Haute-Côte d'Ivoire: les Gbons,' L'Anthropologie 29 (1918-19), pp. 44 and 47
Source location
pp. 44, 47
Source confidence
medium
Location note
Bouna town anchor; exact square unidentified.

Regions: Africa · West Africa

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