STEVENS1976-001 - ethnographic attestation
Bachama roarer of Dong, brought from Mbulo
Nigeria - Southern Bachamaland, Numan Division (now Demsa LGA, Adamawa State) - West Africa
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bull-roarer
Gurumi: the region in Sama (Chamba) country where, for Bachama and Bata, the souls of the dead go. Samba: the Bachama name for the Sama. Mbulo: a community "in Samba area" from which Dong's royal clans claim descent.
The Bachama of the Benue say their dead go to Gurumi, in the country of the Sama, whom they call Samba. The bull-roarer came out of that country too. In all Bachamaland only Dong and one other southern village use it. Dong's royal clans trace their descent to the youngest son of Kuludu, the chiefdom's legendary founder: a boy born of a Samba woman and raised in Mbulo, and the man, they say, who brought the bull-roarer into Dong's ritual. The other village says it had the roarer from Mbulo as well. Mbulo, in Samba country, says it had it from the Sama themselves.
In Bachamaland, the bull-roarer is used only in Dong and one other southern village, which also claims to have obtained it from Mbulo.
Stevens 1976:32
- Object
- Bull-roarer; not described.
- Function
- Used in the ritual of Dong, a minor Bachama chiefdom, and of one other southern Bachama village; Dong credits its introduction to a son of the chiefdom's founder.
- Source
- Phillips Stevens Jr., "The Danubi Ancestral Shrine," African Arts 10, no. 1 (October 1976): 30-37, at p. 32
- Source location
- p. 32
- Source confidence
- medium
- Location note
- Dong, Laweru ward, Demsa LGA, Adamawa State: OSM health facilities named for Dong cluster at 9.39-9.41 N, 11.92-11.99 E; the village node itself is not in OSM. Dong is labelled on Stevens's own map.
Regions: Africa · West Africa