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This model of a WASAMBA or sistrum, an instrument made from wood or a gourd, comes from the BAMBARA population of Mali. It consists of a fork of wood, where one of the arms acts as a neck and the other, slimmed down and made cylindrical, supports some discs of gourd with the bottom engraved with notches and with a hole in the centre. Shaking the instrument, which is held by the neck, the disks of gourd (dried in the sun) run down the stick, hitting one another and the stick itself, producing an intense and noisy wood sound. This is a ritual instrument, also common with the neighbouring DOGON and used in male initiation rites. The use of the WASAMBA appears to be reserved solely for the rite of circumcision, both during the ceremony and in the period of convalescence and withdrawal, when the young circumcised boys are kept at a good distance from women and, more in general, from those who are not circumcised.
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