The Bullroarer Atlas

SCHEBESTA1933-004 - primary ethnography

Balendu (Lendu) of Geti

Democratic Republic of the Congo - Geti, Irumu Territory, Ituri - Belgian Congo - Central Africa

Sacred / spirit

A slender bullroarer trailing a dark fibre tassel from its knotted cord.
Representative — not this record’s object. · A slender bullroarer trailing a dark fibre tassel from its knotted cord Image source

fomvokai / fomvokia German

Source term: Schwirrholz

fomvokai (also fomvokia): the Balendu (Lendu) name for the bullroarer at Geti, built on fomvo, their word for God; the pot-instrument of the same locality is ogobakai.

At Geti, seventy-odd kilometres south of Kilo, the same people give the bullroarer a different name: fomvokai, also heard as fomvokia. Their word for God is fomvo. Paul Schebesta set the two down side by side without comment, in a list of initiation terms he had gathered from the peoples living around the Efe in the hope that their vocabulary would explain the rite he had not been permitted to see; the instrument's name is the god's name with a syllable added. He notes the pot-instrument of the same place as ogobakai — the same -kai ending, so that here too the roarer and the deep vessel-instrument are a matched pair, as glöi and go are at Kilo. Whether the Geti Balendu would have said outright that the roarer was fomvo, the way a Lendu man said of one that it was Tore, is not on the page. Nor is the thing itself: Schebesta saw no bullroarer used in this district and described none. What survives is a set of words — but words that file the instrument, the drum and the god inside a single naming system.

Die Balendu von Geti heißen das Schwirrholz fomvokai oder fomvokia; Gott nennen sie fomvo. Das Topfinstrument heißt ogobakai.

The Balendu of Geti call the bullroarer fomvokai or fomvokia; God they call fomvo. The pot-instrument is called ogobakai.

Schebesta 1933:135
Object
The object is not described. Schebesta records the name only — no dimensions, material, cord or perforation — and states at p. 133 that he saw no bullroarer in use among the peoples of this district.
Function
Entered in Schebesta's list of initiation terminology collected from the peoples around the Efe: at Geti the bullroarer is fomvokai (also fomvokia) and the word for God is fomvo, the instrument's name being the god's name extended; the pot-instrument of the same locality is ogobakai. No account of use was recorded.
Map confidence
medium - Geti, Irumu Territory, Ituri — the locality Schebesta names for these Balendu; a town-level anchor, not a village or performance site.
Source location
Page references

printed p. 135; PDF p. 143 (offset +8)

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