SUBSAH-036 - museum specimen

Yoruba (Ana-Ife) of Togoland, around Atakpame, central Togo

German Togoland (central plateau, Atakpame country); modern central Togo - West Africa

Function not recorded

Among the Yoruba the whirring blade is the voice of Orò, the ancestral spirit of judgment who appears as sound and never as a body. When it rose over a town a curfew fell -- women and the uninitiated barred their doors, for a woman who saw the thing that made the voice was said to die for it. This painted piece was catalogued only as "Bull roarer. Jorubas, Togoland," the westernmost Yoruba, the Ana around Atakpame; the museum recorded no use, but a Yoruba bullroarer is Orò's.

Bull roarer. Jorubas, Togoland, Africa. 279049. Collected by Leipzig Museum of Ethnology.

The Exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 1915, p. 59

Object

A single painted bull-roarer, division Ethnology, catalogued by the Smithsonian as "Bull Roarer : Musical" (specimen count 1). The 1915 exhibition catalogue lists it among African musical instruments as "Bull roarer. Jorubas, Togoland." The only recorded manufacturing detail is that it is painted; no dimensions, materials, or maker are given.

Function

Function not recorded; the object is classed only as a musical instrument in the museum index and the 1915 exhibition catalogue.

Map confidence

low - Representative anchor at Atakpame, the principal town of the Yoruba (Ana-Ife) of central Togo, who are the 'Jorubas, Togoland' of the 1915 catalogue; the record names the people and region (Yoruba / Togoland) but no exact findspot, and the Leipzig Museum sourced an adjacent object from 'Atakpames, Togoland' on the same page.

Source location

Museum no. 279049 / catalog E279049-0; Panama-Pacific Exposition exhibits catalogue (Smithsonian, 1915) p. 59, 'Arts of the Africans (Musical)'

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