Kele · South banks of the Congo River, between Kisangani and Isangi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa
Yell
Summary
Yelling system of the Lokele people in D.R. Congo, described in Carrington (1944). H and L linguistic tone is encoded by shouted vocables, where syllables kɛ or lɛ correspond to L-toned syllables and ki or li to H-toned syllables (540). Most commonly used for long-distance communication “between canoes on the river… beyond the reach of normal conversation” (540). 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… [as the] shouting-at-a-distance language” (540).
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