SUBSAH-002 - museum specimen

Dogon / Awa society

Mali - Bandiagara - Sanga - West Africa

Restricted

Among the Dogon of the Bandiagara cliffs, three bullroarers are carved before each Sigui — the great rite held once in sixty years — and they bear the same name as the carved wooden serpent that is the Great Mask of the Awa society: imina na. On the level of myth, Germaine Dieterlen recorded, each bullroarer is a tongue: one belonging to the Fox, cut at the same moment as his larynx; one to the silure catfish, symbol of the human fetus; and the third to Dyongou Sérou, the first ancestor to die, sacrificed to make human life on Earth possible and then resurrected as the serpent the Great Mask depicts. The young initiates called olubaru, "masters of the bush," learn the secret sigi language during a long retreat and are charged with sounding the instruments, which they make hum at night through the ceremony. At the climax of the dama funeral the Great Mask goes to the dead man's terrace, where a relative ties a live chicken — the soul finally granted — to its top; the speech it then gives in thanks is what the droning bullroarer translates. Women and the uninitiated keep away from anything to do with the masks. Dogon myth holds that a woman of the Andoumboulou was the first to find the red mask-fibers and use them to frighten the men, who seized the fibers from her but named her "sister" of the masks to mark her discovery; the female figure of the satimbe mask commemorates her. A 1935 photograph by Marcel Griaule, held by the musée du quai Branly, shows a man at Sanga whirling such a bullroarer as women approach; Griaule also figured Dogon bullroarers of wood and iron in his Masques dogons.

On the level of myth, each of the three bullroarers is a tongue. The first is that of the Fox, which was cut at the same time as his larynx when he tried to appropriate Nommo's souls at the time of his sacrifice... a long wooden serpent called the "Great Mask," imina na, was carved for the sigi to represent Dyongou Sérou as an ancestor.

Dieterlen 1989, "Masks and Mythology among the Dogon," African Arts 22(3):43

Object

A flat oval slat of wood or iron, whirled on a long cord. The Dogon call it imina na, the same name as the carved serpent Great Mask: the bullroarer "too is a mask," and its drone is that mask's voice. Quai Branly 71.1949.44.6 is an Ireli blade so catalogued, 27.8 x 5 x 2.5 cm and 70 g.

Function

The whirring is the voice of the dead first ancestor (Dyongou Sérou). Newly-initiated olubaru make and sound it during the Sigui and at the midnight climax of the dama funeral, heralding the Great Mask; women and the uninitiated must shut themselves indoors. Dogon myth holds women owned the masks first, received from the Andoumboulou, before men seized them (Dieterlen 1989; Ezra 1988:25).

Map confidence

medium_high - Sanga/Bandiagara source locality from the Quai Branly/Lacharriere collection page and Griaule photo caption; not Paris museum location.

Source location

Musée du quai Branly–Lacharrière, Dogon rhombe (Sanga; 1935 photo caption); Schaeffner, Plate XI item 1, Trocadero 31.74.2046 (Sanga) | Quai Branly 71.1949.44.6

• Spirit voice
• Initiation rite
• Death and rebirth
• Forbidden to women
• Women-linked
• Female-origin myth

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