The Bullroarer Atlas

SUBSAH-037 - ethnographic attestation

Mbuti (BaMbuti, Ituri Forest "Pygmies")

Democratic Republic of the Congo - Ituri Forest, northeastern Congo (Ituri Province), DRC - Central Africa

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A long, narrow wooden slat with cord bound at several points along its shaft and an old accession number inked near one end — a Luba...
Representative image. A long, narrow wooden slat with cord bound at several points along its shaft and an old accession number inked near one end — a Luba bull-roarer from the Congo basin, shown for the regional form. The Mbuti instrument that whirs and roars in the Ituri Forest has not been photographed. © The Trustees of the British Museum (Af1909,0513.212) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

In the Ituri Forest, Colin Turnbull watched a bullroarer roar through the nkumbi, the boys' circumcision rite of the village farmers to whom the Mbuti send their sons: its sound 'was meant to be the voice of a forest demon, and the boys had to show due respect and terror when they heard it.' The terror was performance. Each night, when the village instructors left, the boys leapt from their beds to eat forbidden foods with their fathers — one boy 'jumped onto a log and swung his arms around in imitation of someone swinging a bull-roarer, which of course he should never have seen.' The Mbuti's own religion had no demons in it. The forest 'is a father and mother to us,' and when someone dies the men wake it by singing; the voice of their own molimo trumpet — once, to Turnbull's astonishment, a length of metal drainpipe — mattered only for its sound, and its songs said simply that the forest is good.

The sound of the bull-roarer, a piece of wood that makes a strange whirring noise when spun around on the end of a cord, was meant to be the voice of a forest demon, and the boys had to show due respect and terror when they heard it.

Turnbull, The Forest People (1961), p. 222
Object
A flat slat of wood whirled on the end of a single cord to produce a strange whirring roar.
Function
Whirled during the nkumbi boys' circumcision-initiation as the voice of a forest demon, before which the initiates must show respect and terror.
Map confidence
medium - approximate territory centroid (Ituri Rainforest, NE DRC, per Wikipedia coordinates 1.5571 N / 28.4491 E)
Source location
Page not confirmed (nkumbi initiation chapter)

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