Date: 17 October 1958
Place: Truro
WITCH-DOCTOR'S RATTLE AT CMS EXHIBITION
THE ancient music of Africa was sounded last week at a mobile exhibition arranged by the Church Missionary Society in St. Mary’s Hall, Truro. The exhibition’s visit to the city was part of a lightning tour of Cornwall.
Besides its pictures and models, it featured African curiosities, including musical instruments. Some of the vibrating parts of these were made of flattened-out bicycle wheel spokes, umbrella struts, or pieces of oil-drums.
The parts were put on to wooden sounding-boxes made on the same principle as the body of a guitar, and Mr. D. M. Pluckrose, formerly of Nigeria, demonstrated to a reporter how they were used. There were other objects of less endearing character, among them a witch-doctor’s knife of particularly wicked appearance, and a witchdoctor’s rattle, very like a huge and extremely thick brown necklace.