SIBER-001 - secondary catalog
Even
Russia - East Siberia - northern Yakutia - North Asia
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bullroarer
Among the Even of northern Yakutia, the bullroarer was heard as the voice of an owl "speaking." Players could layer in further sounds, perhaps to mimic a wood grouse. The anthropologist Marilyn Walker recorded this from Even informants, the daughter of a shaman among them, who placed the instrument within a wider world of imitative sound: the herder's staff that whistles when thrown, the hide pouch hung with reindeer hooves, an instrument said to mimic the wind that moves the grass, which the Evenks held to be the work of spirits. Children listened to the bullroarer and had to guess whose voice it was making. Learning to recognize all these sounds of nature, and to build the instruments that reproduced them, was a child's musical education in Even families.
Traditional Even instruments included the bullroarer which is the sound of an owl "speaking." Sometimes peoples added other sounds to the basic bullroarer sound, perhaps to produce the sound of a wood grouse.
Walker 2005:168 (Shaman, Vol. 13)
- Object
- Bullroarer described as sound of an owl speaking
- Function
- Traditional Even instrument with animal-sound symbolism
- Map confidence
- medium - Even northern Yakutia regional anchor not publication location
- Source location
- Shaman Vol. 13 (2005), p. 167
- Spirit voice
- Toy / secular survival