Southern Africa

|han≠kass’o’s account, published by Bleek and Lloyd, gives bee work a sequence. The people want swarms to increase and move, then to cut the honey, put it in bags and share it at home. The !goin !goin’s wooden blade and little handle make an insect presence audible to the human company. The surrounding dance is part of that company’s action, with women’s drumming and clapping beside men’s dancing. The desired change is a landscape with honey in it. ³

|Xam Bushmen

Animals could also be the direct listeners. Among the Auin, Gretschel describes a long blade swung on a cord, its drone likened to a male ostrich’s luring call. Gretschel records hunters sounding it to draw a female from her nest into shooting range. The bee and ostrich accounts give the imitation an ecological purpose: the sound is useful because of the creature it evokes and what people expect that creature to do. ¹⁵

Auin (=Auen / Aokhoe) San, Gobabis-Epukiro

In |Xam testimony, !Khwa took animate form as the rain-beast, a cow, bull or eland that specialists could capture and lead across the country. Its leading thong vibrated with a ringing sound likened to a bullroarer passing along the sky. Rain could thus be worked with as a moving being. The roarer comparison connects a familiar hand-made sound to the strange audible passage of water’s power across the dry land. ⁴

Doring River rock-art shelter

Rusch and Wurz bring that testimony to a Doring River painting of eight figures holding what they identify as sounding bullroarers. They recovered faded detail, made replicas and recorded their sound, interpreting the scene as work with rain. It gives the regional account a painted depth, with the authors’ interpretation attached to it. The excavated Matjes River MR40 offers another kind of depth: experiments and perforation wear support a spun instrument, while its ancient purpose remains unrecorded. ^{4, 17}

Doring River rock-art shelter · Matjes River rock shelter

The Uukwaluudhi king appointed the ekanjo, old men who called clouds for rain. Moving in secret at night and eastward at dawn, they whirled blades to imitate great flying birds. No one could address them or look at them without risking misfortune for crops. The four-day first procession accompanied the Small Rains and sowing; on its last day, small stock acquired on the journey was sacrificed to the omathila. Sound joined royal appointment, movement through settlements and the opening of the farming year. ¹

Uukwaluudhi / Owambo

A second procession came when crops were established and the Big Rains expected. People now greeted the feather-bearing men with cries for rain and drove their hoes harder as though it had fallen. In the neighbouring Kwanyama world, Loeb records edila as the giant bird that swallowed circumcision boys; its hum concealed the instrument from boys and mothers. A survivor had passed through the bird’s anus. The bird voice met two sorts of growth, with the particular offices belonging to their own communities. ^{1, 2}

Uukwaluudhi / Owambo · Kwanyama / Owambo

The Kwanyama voice could also mark the end of kingship. On the fourth mourning day for a circumcised king, a player stood within a crowd of initiated men to sound the hidden instrument. Loeb calls this osinghuma: it announced that there was no longer a king and that the mourning was extraordinary. The same sounding craft could gather a royal community around regeneration, a dangerous initiation and the loss of its ruler. ²

Kwanyama / Owambo

In the Angola–Zambia initiation worlds, the names ndumba mwila, ndumbamwelela and ndumba mwelela keep the lion close. Turner saw the Ndembu voice sounded by a junior guardian behind the Mukanda lodge: a fish-shaped blade of red mukula wood, terrifying novices and mothers with a monster said to swallow boys. At Luvale Solochi, two roarers broke into women’s Mukanda dancing. The dancers cheered and answered the lion-like growl; it announced that the boys’ camp would begin. ^{10, 11}

Ndembu / Wukengi Farm / Nyaluhana vicinage · Luvale / Solochi Village

Kubik’s Luchazi recording catches another stage. At kulonda ntsimba, the climbing of the genet cat, all the wounds had healed and the boys had regained their nimbleness. Kukuwa songs, choirs, rattles and struck instruments sounded with ndumba mwelela, whose strange voice frightened the secluded novices. The regional family has an actual sequence of lodge events: a camp’s announcement, the sound behind its wall and the celebration of bodily recovery. Each example gives the animal voice its own moment. ¹²

Luchazi (Lucazi), mukanda lodges around Chikenge

A Chokwe man showed Baumann a flat-board ndumbamwela when asked about children’s games, glossing it lion-roaring. Baumann wondered whether the name retained a Mukanda tie; his witnessed use was play. The shared name can be heard beside living lodge voices without turning that speculation into the toy’s biography. A lion’s sound remains recognizable as it moves between different kinds of ownership. ¹³

Chokwe (Tsokwe)

Humbi-Handa lumpoku sounded in ekwendje camps as the voice of an all-powerful being. Estermann’s Nyaneka-Humbe account also names the roaring ehulumphuku, and the saying that it had swallowed a boy maimed by the operation. Humbe mothers sent new baskets for homecoming; a dead son’s basket returned with the bottom cut out. For those who came back, the mothers danced childbirth. The heard being and the returning body belong to a rite in which departure from home becomes a second birth. ^{14, 18}

Humbi and Handa

Naro elders likewise gave boys a presence outside ordinary village sight: a night roarer stood for //Gauwa or Hise, and an elder-built grass hut became the being’s address. Among Ju|’hoansi, later ethnographic accounts place elders’ secret sounding with mythical creators and the burning of the instrument afterward. These San scenes share a controlled encounter between a growing boy and a powerful voice, while the bee dance carries the sound into a mixed company seeking a different kind of increase. ^{16, 17, 3}

Naro (Nharo) San, Ghanzi District · Ju|'hoansi / !Kung · |Xam Bushmen

G/wi and G//ana men made gíg/ù for boys, trimming a korhaan tail feather for its rotor. Nurse watched boys vary the buzz’s rhythm as children of both sexes clapped, sang or hummed. The noise belonged inside music. A Korana boy at Bloemhof whirled burubush by its cord; Sotho children carried sevuruvuru against dogs and other animals. The Tswana seburuburu name joins these rolling words across communities where children made the sounding object part of daily life. ^{5, 6}

G/wi and G//ana · Korana (!Kora Khoekhoe) · Sotho · Tswana (Batswana)

Other southern accounts keep play and ceremony in the same history. Theal’s Xhosa nodiwu silenced crying children, yet adults stopped it when calm weather was wanted because its sound invited a gale. Venda children made both slats and spinning disks, while Blacking records the bullroarer in adopted circumcision rites. Van Schalkwyk, describing Molepo toys, also cites Mönnig’s account of Pedi kgabubu in girls’ initiation. The voice can grow with children into adult institutions while remaining in younger hands. ^{7, 6, 8, 9}

Kaffir / Amakosa / Xhosa · Venda (Vhavenda) · Pedi (Transvaal Sotho)