Hemba Rattle

Songye/Luba/Hemba shakaree (rattles) These type of objects are widespread among the Luba and Hemba groups. The handles are carved in the shape of human torsos, or heads, with facial features denoting a serene expression, or janus, reminiscent of the janus Kabeja figures. Dried seeds inside the gourd produce a rattle sound.
Luba and Hemba rattles first appeared in publications in 1975. Judging from the refinement and delicacy of the modeling, they were clearly carved by the same artists who sculpted the famous ancestral figures. A careful stylistic analysis could attribute each rattle to a specific atelier, based on the type of coiffure.

These rattles were used in the Bagabo secret society. Other scholars suggest that since the rattles appeared in the art market in the early 1970s, at the same time as the ancestral statues, they could have been used in rituals pertaining to the cults connected with the worship of the ancestral statues. The rattles may also have been used by diviners in healing the sick, by evoking spirits, or by dispelling bad spirits from the body of their patients.