Kele · Yanonge, Yanonge, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa
Whistle
Summary
Whistling system used by the Lokele people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, described in Carrington (1944). The system is either performed “with the lips” or with a whistle fashioned from a fruit, with two contrastive pitches “about a minor third apart” (540). Most commonly used by young people. Evidently, “[e]xactly the same system of message transmission as that in use on the two-toned slit drum bouŋgu is used for transmitting information… by whistling”.
Bibliography
Carrington, J. F. (1976). The Drum Language of the Lokele Tribe. In T. A. Sebeok & J. Umiker-Sebeok, Speech Surrogates: Drum and Whistle Systems. 1976. (pp. 591–668). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110804423-001