Wooden slit gongs played a pivotal role in Bamum society in Cameroon.
Their function was to send out signals in times of crisis from within
the royal court. By the time German colonists reached the Bamum kingdom
for the first time in 1910, they found eight of these spectacular
instruments, each hollowed out from a central slit, decaying on the
palace ground like felled giants from a mythical past. Two French
colonial administrators stationed in the Bamilike region noted that
these gongs were carved when a king was enthroned; when he died they
were abandoned in the market square and left to rot as if undergoing the
same process of decomposition as the king himself.
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