Whence
Didgeridoo
Music & dance

Where does Didgeridoo come from?

The didgeridoo comes from northern Australia, most likely Arnhem Land. Aboriginal peoples there developed this long wooden trumpet centuries before Europeans arrived, and its deep, unbroken drone is now heard all over the world.

Hollowed out by termites

A traditional didgeridoo starts as a eucalyptus trunk or branch hollowed out by termites. Makers look for trees with termite activity and knock on the wood to hear whether the hollow will resonate. The tree is cut down, cleaned out and stripped of its bark, and a beeswax mouthpiece is often added at the narrow end. Most instruments are about 1.2 metres long; the longer the tube, the lower the note. Players keep the drone going with circular breathing.

How old is it?

Nobody knows its exact age. A rock painting at Ginga Wardelirrhmeng, on the northern edge of the Arnhem Land plateau, shows a didgeridoo player with two song-men, and rock paintings of players have been dated to between 1,000 and 1,500 years ago. Before European contact the instrument was played almost only in Australia's far north. One early European record is a drawing in T. B. Wilson's 1835 book of a man playing it at Raffles Bay, east of Darwin.

A name made up in English

Didgeridoo is not an Aboriginal word. It is thought to imitate the instrument's sound in English: in 1908 the Hamilton Spectator, a newspaper in Victoria, mentioned a 'did-gery-do (hollow bamboo)', and in 1919 Smith's Weekly wrote that a 'didjerry' went 'didjerry, didjerry, didjerry and so on ad infinitum'. The musicologist Alice Moyle found almost as many names as language groups that play it, among them yidaki in northeast Arnhem Land and mako in West Arnhem Land.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · theconversation.com ↗

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