The Bullroarer Atlas

SUBSAH-013 - museum specimen

Banda

Central African Republic - Bangassou - Ubangi region, CAR - Central Africa

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An African bull-roarer cut from a pale flat strip of bamboo, twine wound in loose coils around its upper half and a scorched zigzag line...
Representative image. An African bull-roarer cut from a pale flat strip of bamboo, twine wound in loose coils around its upper half and a scorched zigzag line running down the lower; the bamboo ngàkôlâ collected among the Banda at Bangassou by the Dakar-Djibouti mission is now missing from its museum collection, so this related Central African piece is shown in its place. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Af1962-17-66) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

ngàkôlâ French

ngàkôlâ: Banda name of the Bangassou rhombe; same name as Ngakola, spirit/hero of the sômalè society in Fürniss 1993

Etymology. Not a decomposed word but a name: ngàkôlâ is Ngakola, the central Banda bush spirit - a hero-cultivator sent to restore order who degenerates into a giant, hairy, cannibal ogre, and the eponym of the Ngakola initiation society. The rhombe is named after, and serves as the voice of, this spirit. (medium confidence)

Ngakola, the Banda hero who hardened into a hairy, cannibal tyrant, told men: send me people, I shall eat them and vomit them up renewed. In his secret society, the sômalè, a novice was declared swallowed alive — whipped and tortured in the monster's belly, hearing its mournful voice, until the master cried that Ngakola had spat him back reborn. This bamboo bullroarer from Bangassou carried the monster's own name, ngàkôlâ. Collected by the Dakar-Djibouti mission, it vanished into the Musée de l'Homme for seventy years before resurfacing in a 2007 exhibition catalogue.

un rhombe banda en bambou

a bamboo Banda rhombe

Fürniss, Journal des africanistes 63(2) (1993), pp. 92-93
Object
Bamboo Banda rhombe collected at Bangassou by the Dakar-Djibouti mission; long untraceable at the Musée de l'Homme, it reappears as Fig. 1.74 of the 2007 Ubangi exhibition catalogue (musée du quai Branly 71.1931.74.2876).
Function
Highly ritual Central African rhombe tied by name to Ngakola, the Banda hero-cultivator / spirit of the somale secret society; no checked source states a women-specific prohibition.
Map confidence
high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
Source location
Journal des africanistes 63(2), p. 92 and annex inventory p. 116; cites Vergiat 1936 pp. 60, 102, 134; Grootaers (ed.), Ubangi (2007), p. 58 and Fig. 1.74

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