slit-log drum, bombalom

System employing slit-log drums used by the Manjak people of Guinea-Bissau, described in Wilson (1963) (as “Manjaco”) along with surrogates of several related Bak languages and Sua. The instrument itself, called bombalom in Portoguese, is a wooden slit-log drum several feet long, suspended by smaller logs at either end. It is beaten with two sticks over a foot in length, producing two pitches “several tones apart” (807). The language itself (according to Wilson) has H and L tone, root-initial stress and contrastive vowel length. In the surrogate, the H and L tones correspond to high and low pitches. Stressed syllables are encoded with exaggerated strikes; the especially light taps of some unstressed syllables in Balanta are not attested in Manjak (812). Long vowels “are represented by two taps” (812). A grammatical tone process (tone raising at the end of the genitive construction) and postlexical vowel epenthesis are both attested to be represented in the surrogate (815). Enphrasing is employed. Content includes long-distance communication, announcements of deaths, and specific drum names.

Wilson, W. A. (1963). 43. TALKING DRUMS IN GUINÉ. In J. Umiker-Sebeok & T. A. Sebeok, Speech Surrogates: Drum and Whistle Systems. 1976. (pp. 806–815). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110804423-014