Flutes, horns and whistles

Besides drums, Lango music used wind instruments.

• The otule was the flute that accompanied dances. It was made from an antelope horn with three finger holes, burnt in with a hot spear-butt. Flutes came in three sizes: the min bilo (“mother flute”, bass), the adadang (tenor) and the atin bilo (“child flute”, treble). A flute band had five players: two atin bilo, one adadang and two min bilo.
• Earlier dances were played on the olwet, a four-hole wooden flute that had almost gone out of use by Driberg’s time.
• The apel (also called arupape) was a trumpet made from a hollowed euphorbia stem or an antelope horn. It gave two notes and was used in war and at dances to make a noise.
• The bilo proper was a war whistle made from a small horn.

Driberg noted that the Lango had borrowed from their neighbours in music more than in anything else, and that the flutes and drum bands had replaced older instruments.

Source: J. H. Driberg, The Lango: A Nilotic Tribe of Uganda (London, 1923), pp. 123–126; public domain. It describes life about a hundred years ago as a colonial administrator saw it, so customs have changed and some may be told differently today. Elders and families are invited to correct it and add what they know.