The Bullroarer Atlas

SEA-005 - ethnographic attestation

Kintak Bong / Semang Negrito

Malaysia - Perak - Ulu Selama - Lubok Tapah - Southeast Asia - Malay Peninsula

Play / practical

A Batak dengeng-dengeng from North Sumatra — a slender cane rod and a small blade strung on its own cord (Wereldmuseum RV-1680-1) — shown for...
Representative image. A Batak dengeng-dengeng from North Sumatra — a slender cane rod and a small blade strung on its own cord (Wereldmuseum RV-1680-1) — shown for the general Southeast Asian form; the Kintak Bong (Semang) bull-roarer of Lubok Tapah documented here has no published photograph. Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. RV-1680-1) CC BY-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

Among the Kintak Bong, a Semang Negrito people of Ulu Selama in Perak, the bull-roarer was a children's toy. Ivor Evans obtained a specimen at Lubok Tapah, a Malay village, during his 1921 fieldwork there, and when he asked about it the headman Mempelam told him it was the ghosts' Jew's-harp. The gloss had a basis in the living instrument: the Semang and Malay Jew's-harp was cut from bamboo or palm wood, and the Malays called it genggong.

The bull-roarer, of which I obtained a specimen at Lubok Tapah, is used as a toy by Kintak Bong children, but Mempelam told me that it is the ghosts' Jew's-harp.

Evans 1923:177
Object
Specimen obtained by Evans at Lubok Tapah
Function
Bull-roarer specimen from Lubok Tapah; used as a toy by Kintak Bong children.
Map confidence
medium - Approximate Kampung Tapah/Sungai Bayor/Ulu Selama regional anchor for Evans's Lubok Tapah in Ulu Selama; not an exact 1921 camp coordinate
Source location
printed p. 177

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