The Bullroarer Atlas

SUBSAH-021 - secondary catalog

Tupuri (Toupouri)

SW Chad - N Cameroon (Mayo-Kebbi) - Central Africa

Function not recorded

An Arab bull-roarer, a flat wood board with cord wound at the handle end; the Tupuri (Toupouri) bull-roarer reported by Arnaud and Lecomte's...
Representative image. An Arab bull-roarer, a flat wood board with cord wound at the handle end; the Tupuri (Toupouri) bull-roarer reported by Arnaud and Lecomte's survey comes from an unrecovered source, with no image of the instrument itself. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (acc. 1913.17.72) Image source

Among the Tupuri, fisher-farmers of the Mayo-Kebbi wetlands where Chad meets Cameroon, a bull-roarer surfaces only as a single line in a French survey of African music — named once, never described in use. No fieldworker has caught it swinging, set down its voice, or tied it to the gurna generation-initiation or to the barkage, the water-spirits who crowd Tupuri rivers and speak every visitor's language. What the instrument did here, if anything, stays unwritten. The entry records that it existed, and nothing more.

Object
Reported Tupuri/Toupouri bull-roarer from an unrecovered Arnaud and Lecomte survey entry.
Function
Unrecovered Arnaud and Lecomte survey occurrence lead for a Tupuri/Toupouri bull-roarer; local materials do not recover the page or any women/female context.
Map confidence
medium - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
Source location
Arnaud & Lecomte 2006

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