No. SUBSAH-020
Goula Iro Yontô bullroarer, Boum Kabir
Boum Kabir, north shore of Lake Iro, southeastern Chad · Central Africa
Restricted
yondo / yontô
Source term: rhombe / yontô
yondo (also yontô): the men's initiation. Yontô is the spirit who presides over the boys' death and rebirth in the bush.
At Boum Kabir, boys of ten or fifteen were called to “die yondo.” The men's initiation was a death: with their age-mates they went through a symbolic burial outside the village, and came back reborn as a new generation of adult men. Over this manufactured death and rebirth sounded the rhombe, heard as the speech of Yontô, the spirit who presided over the ordeal. The Goula Iro said the initiation had been borrowed from their Sara neighbours about a century earlier.
Le rhombe est assimilé à la parole de Yontô.
The bullroarer is identified with the speech of Yontô.
Pairault, Journal de la Société des Africanistes 34(1) (1964), p. 141 n. 3
Particulars
- Object
- Whirled slat understood as the speech of Yontô.
- Function
- Voice of Yontô during boys' initiation, which staged death, burial and rebirth into adult status.
Source
Claude Pairault, 'Boum Kabir en présence de la mort,' Journal de la Société des Africanistes 34(1) (1964): 141–167, at p. 141 and n. 3