SUBSAH-023 - secondary catalog
Bobo
Bobo-Dioulasso region, western Burkina Faso - West Africa
Restricted
aliwe French
Among the Bobo of western Burkina Faso, the rhombe is a cult object of Dwo, the "son" of the withdrawn creator god Wuro who mediates between men and a distant divinity. Guy Le Moal recorded its origin in the myth of Kwele Dwo: near the village a great hornbill, the kuma, perched on a baobab and seized and ate the children, so a blacksmith dug a deep round pit like a well, roofed it with thatch, and from his hiding place shot the bird with a gun. The wounded hornbill conjured a quiver, arrows, and a bow, then a rhombe, and finally the head of the molo mask, telling the smith, "it is called Dwo, the children cannot see it until they have paid." The blacksmiths carried off the mask, the rhombe, and the bow, and the objects were reckoned very dangerous and kept from children or those not cleared for the rite. In a funeral Le Moal photographed, the priest of Dwo, Sibiri Sanu, laid the cult objects revealed by the mythic hornbill - the bow, a quiver, arrows, and the rhombe - before the seated molo; the rhombe was not wood but a heavy lump of metal on a cord, which, swung whirling through the air, gives off a vibrating sound that makes one shudder.
Actionné et tournoyant dans l'air, il produit un son vibratoire qui fait frémir.
Set in motion and whirling through the air, it produces a vibrating sound that makes one shudder.
Le Moal, Masques bobo: vie, formes et couleurs (2008:103)
- Object
- Metal rhombe attached to a cord, one of the Dwo cult objects revealed with the Kwele Dwo mask.
- Function
- Kwele Dwo cult object revealed with the bow, quiver, arrows, and molo mask; sounded in sibe Dwo funerary reception and tied to initiation/restriction from children or unpaid initiates.
- Map confidence
- high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
- Source location
- Le Moal, Masques bobo (2008), pp. 99-103
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Death and rebirth