Southeast Asia

Two Kenyah-Badang players swing their kidiu over the hill-rice fields at harvest. Each wooden oval hangs from a string and handle; rapid swinging gives it a pitch. Together the players interlock pitches and rhythms, turning crop protection into a duet. The pests to be driven away are insects. A sound made by two people, responsive to their speed and timing, becomes part of the work of bringing the padi safely home. ¹

Kenyah-Badang

Farther down the Bornean rivers, the task was to keep birds from rice. Charles Hose first encountered a bullroarer in a Kenyah house on the Tinjar. When he showed it to Narom people near Claudetown on the lower Baram, they recognized it, said they used it frequently and made examples for him. Their spearhead-shaped wooden blades had two projecting ears at the corded end and a long stick to drive the swing. The sound had familiar work to do before it became an object in a collection. ²

Narom (?), Lower Baram, Sarawak · Kenyah / Klemantan

Taiwan offers a related repertoire among its Indigenous communities. Amis children used bnbn in play and to protect crops from birds. The Tsou euvuvu carried farther: its drone echoed across valleys as a warning of enemies, called rain and frightened birds, and later greeted the opening of the fona life-bean festival. These are particular Taiwanese practices within the wider Austronesian world. They extend the comparison from a cultivated field to the valley through which a community hears approaching danger. ¹⁸

Amis · Tsou

A Kayan rice clearing did not leave the local spirits homeless. Trees remained standing on high ground for the Toh, who were thought to rest in them. One could be stripped of its branches and fitted with a cross-pole hung with palm leaves. Sometimes a bullroarer hung there too, dangling and flickering in the breeze. A boys' plaything had become part of arranging a new field around its older inhabitants. The instrument was suspended on the tree, rather than actively swung by a performer. ³

Kayan, Baram and Rejang rivers, Sarawak

The Malay plantation guard addressed a more bodily danger. A Patani boatman called his instruments lembing buluh, bamboo spear; their noise was used against elephants, and one account likened it to a tiger. At Jalor, farther up the peninsula, a cane blade hung from a cord and long fishing-rod-like handle. The baling could travel from plantation work into a child's hands. An animal driven away, a spirit given somewhere to remain and a child enjoying the swing are different ways of living with the same sounding object. ^{4, 5}

Patani Malay boatman, Kuala Langat / Selangor · Jalor (Yala) Malays · Pattani

Among the Kintak Bong, a child's bĕtaling had another identity: the ghosts' Jew's-harp. Sounding it in the forest was forbidden because a tiger might think it had heard a companion and come looking. The warning gave a familiar toy an unsettling audience. In the same Kenta account, offences against Kaei could set his dragon or snake guardian Tanogn roaring, and that roar made thunder. The bullroarer's tiger warning belonged to this world of consequential offences. ^{6, 7}

Kintak Bong / Semang Negrito

On Flores, the bamboo jata also entered the fields, this time to call rain among the Ende, according to the missionary Pé Rozing’s report. Among the Lio farther east, a warning ran in the other direction: its noise resembled a poisonous snake moving and might bring the animal near. The rain practice and the snake warning belong to their respective communities. Set beside the Kintak tiger, they show how an imitated sound can be understood as an invitation. The player's intention does not determine everything that might hear it. ^{8, 9}

Ende (Flores)

The Semaq Beri people whom Ivor Evans met on the Tekai River gave the storm a vigorous body. Nenek, whose name means ancestor in Malay, made thunder by beating his arms against his sides and sounding his armpits. For lightning he flashed a thin board tied to a string. In that telling the bullroarer belonged to the storm-being himself. An anteater held up the sun in the same account, curling around it to make night and unrolling to bring the day. Weather and daylight came from bodily acts. ¹⁰

Semaq Beri (Evans's 'Sakai-Jakun'), Tekai River

The Southern Lisu dictionary preserves the name of another forest encounter. The spirit fũ lù is deaf, yet a bullroarer is required at its ceremonies; fũ lù yũ du names the instrument. The preserved words do not explain the paradox. They give the voice a demanded place in a particular spirit's observance. Beside Nenek's corded lightning and the Kintak ghosts' Jew's-harp, the Lisu pairing shows several ways a whirling sound can enter relations with beings beyond the visible company of players. ^{11, 10, 6}

Southern Lisu · Semaq Beri (Evans's 'Sakai-Jakun'), Tekai River · Kintak Bong / Semang Negrito

After a violent death among the Bontoc, the wedwed sounded with a notched mouth flute and reed aerophones to disturb the killer's soul. Mourning also addressed the person who had been killed. Old women keeping vigil beside the seated dead sang annako, challenging the spirit to take revenge and restore its honour. The instruments and the women's song had distinct addressees in a wake where the living expected the dead to act. The roar joined a response to injury that reached beyond the body of the victim. ¹²

Bontoc / Bontok

Nearby accounts preserve other lives for the instrument. The Sagada bawengweng was a children's wooden toy. At Patoc in Abra, Tinguian boys swung a thin bamboo blade overhead for its pleasing noise and to frighten stray horses. The shared resource was a voice easily put into motion; communities gave that voice its occasion and its listeners. ^{13, 14}

Sagada (Lepanto-Bontok / Northern Kankanay Igorot), Mountain Province, Luzon · Tinguian / Patoc

On Sumatra, Toba Batak children had small oblong wooden roarers; Karo children swung a bamboo spearhead from a long flexible switch. The latter made a little lance circle in the air, tethered to the wand that propelled it. A Rote example likewise belonged to children's play. These instruments ask for skill: a blade must be made, a cord secured and a rhythm found that keeps the sound going. Their different shapes preserve choices by makers rather than a single standard pattern carried unchanged across the islands. ^{15, 16, 17}

Toba Batak, Sumatra · Karo Batak · Rote (Roti)

Play runs through the larger repertoire because children can make and command the sound for themselves. Tinguian games placed the roarer among miniature farming tools, toy animals and other bamboo inventions. Elsewhere the same portable voice worked for a harvest or carried a warning about the forest. Southeast Asia's broad family is held together by these recurring movements between amusement and consequential action: air set turning, an intended listener, and a cultivated world whose edges need care. ^{14, 1, 6}

Tinguian / Patoc · Kenyah-Badang · Kintak Bong / Semang Negrito