The Bullroarer Atlas

SAMER-005 - museum specimen

Bororo, Kejara (Rio Vermelho, Mato Grosso)

Brazil - Mato Grosso - Rio Vermelho - Aldeia Kejara - South America

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The Bororo aige itself: a dark blade stippled with bands of small dotted circles, red-and-yellow feather tufts at its edges, corded through a...
The Bororo aige itself: a dark blade stippled with bands of small dotted circles, red-and-yellow feather tufts at its edges, corded through a small hole at the pointed end and cut into a pale fish-tail notch at the other — from Aldeia Kejara on the Rio Vermelho, Mato Grosso. © Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac Image source

aige English

Source term: Rhombe

aige — the Bororo bullroarer, sharing its name with a mythical water-beast; written aidye / aíge in older sources.

A large Bororo rhombe covered with naturally fluorescent pigments, collected in 1936 by Claude and Dina Lévi-Strauss at Kejara, the Bororo village on the Rio Vermelho in Mato Grosso later described in Tristes Tropiques. The Bororo call the bullroarer aige, which is also the name of a mythical animal likened to a hippopotamus; among the Eastern Bororo of the S. Lourenço and Rio Vermelho the lanceolate boards are swung at funeral rites, where they sound the voice of the dead and where a man smeared head to foot in clay crawls on all fours as the aige. Women are barred from the rite: as soon as the buzzing begins they flee into the forest or hide in the houses, and the old accounts hold that a woman who saw the instrument would die. When the Bororo gave Lévi-Strauss this one, they told him to hide it at the bottom of his locked trunk, out of the women's sight. The Musée du quai Branly catalog (object 133755, inventory 71.1936.48.2) records the village and the object but not the ceremony in which it sounded.

le rhombe, de taille importante et couvert de pigments naturellement fluorescents, représente la voix d'un animal mythique

the rhombe, of considerable size and covered with naturally fluorescent pigments, represents the voice of a mythical animal

Les Réveillées (EHESS), "Le rhombe," on the Bororo rhombe collected by Lévi-Strauss (1936)
Object
Quai Branly object 133755 / inventory 71.1936.48.2, a rhombe from Aldeia Kejara on the Rio Vermelho, Mato Grosso.
Function
Swung at Bororo funeral rites, where the aige boards voice the dead and a clay-smeared man crawls as the aige itself; at the first buzz women flee to the forest or hide, and the old accounts hold that a woman who saw it would die (von den Steinen 1894; Colbacchini 1942).
Map confidence
medium - Representative Eastern Bororo anchor on the Rio Vermelho, Mato Grosso (Sao Lourenco drainage); the exact site of Kejara village is not separately fixed.
Source location
Quai Branly object 133755 / inventory 71.1936.48.2

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