Bullroarer
The bullroarer,[1] rhombus, or turndun, is an ancient ritual musical instrument and a device historically used for communicating over great distances.
Anthropologist Michael Boyd, a bullroarer expert, documents a number found in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Australia.
By modifying the expansiveness of its circuit and the speed given it, and by changing the plane in which the bullroarer is whirled from horizontal to vertical or vice versa, the modulation of the sound produced can be controlled, making the coding of information possible.
[citation needed] This instrument has been used by numerous early and traditional cultures in both the northern and southern hemispheres but in the popular consciousness it is perhaps best known for its use by Australian Aborigines (it is from one of their languages that the name turndun comes).
In an interview, the band's drummer Rob Hirst stated "it's a sacred instrument... only initiated men are supposed to hear those sounds.
[15] In the Elizabeth Goudge novel Gentian Hill (1949), set in Devon in the early 19th century, a bullroarer figures as a toy cherished by Sol, an elderly farm labourer, who uses it occasionally to express strong emotion; however, the sound it makes is perceived as being both eerie and unlucky by two other characters, who have an uneasy sense that ominous spirits of the air ("Them") are being invoked by its whirring whistle.
In 1991, the archeologists Hein B. Bjerck and Martinius Hauglid found a 6.4 cm-long piece of slate that turned out to be a 5000-year-old bullroarer (called a brummer in Scandinavia).
The Dogon use bullroarers to announce the beginning of ceremonies conducted during the Sigui festival held every sixty years over a seven-year period.
North Alaskan Inupiat bullroarers are known as imigluktaaq or imigluktaun and described as toy noise maker of bone or wood and braided sinew (wolf-scare).
[19] Banks Island Eskimos were still using Bullroarers in 1963, when a 59 year old woman named Susie scared off four polar bears armed only with three seal hooks acting as such accompanied by vocals.
Four male tribe members, accompanied by a drummer, would spin bullroarers made from cottonwood, imitating the sound of a thunder storm.
