The Bullroarer Atlas

SUBSAH-039 - ethnographic attestation

Mande Komo-complex sacred hidden Schwirrholz (Frobenius 1908)

Mali - Guinea - Upper Niger between the upper Senegal and the Bani ("Central Mandingo" country) - West Africa

Restricted

A Bamana Komo mask from Mali, its mud-blackened wood bristling with long fibre.
Representative — not this record’s object. · A Bamana Komo mask from Mali, its mud-blackened wood bristling with long fibre. · CC0 Image source

Source term: Schwirrholz

Inside the Komo, Nama, and allied societies of the upper Niger, the bullroarer belonged to the guarded machinery of circumcision and masked power. Frobenius’s report is terse but absolute: it was “a sacred, carefully hidden implement.”

Das Schwirrholz ist ein heiliges, sorgfältig verborgenes Gerät.

The bull-roarer is a sacred, carefully hidden implement.

Frobenius, "Reisebericht," Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 40 (1908), p. 801
Object
Sacred bullroarer concealed within the Komo/Nama men’s-society complex.
Function
Carefully hidden sacred instrument associated with men’s secret societies and the circumcision-festival complex.
Map confidence
medium - Mande heartland regional anchor, upper Niger; Frobenius names a region, not a village
Source location
Page references

ZE 40 (1908), p. 801

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