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Deep Didgeridoo by John Diliberto Back in the 1990s, you couldn't throw a stick without some musician picking it up, hollowing it out and blowing into it. They were all inspired by the Australian didgeridoo, an instrument traditionally made from tree branches hollowed out by termites. The instrument was a particular favorite with electronic from space to techno music and growing trend of multi-culti world fusion of the early 1990s. We were fortunate to have most of these artists on Echoes at one time or another. In this collection of Echoes features, we'll hear from many of them.

"The didgeridoo to me is the heart, and the sound comes from the earth," says Aboriginal didgeridoo player David Hudson. If Gregorian chants are descended from heaven, then the didgeridoo is born from the bowels of the earth. This signature instrument of the northern Australian Aborigines emerged from antiquity to seduce a generation of musicians in the 1990s, just as the sitar did in the 1960s.

Artists like Steve Roach, Outback, Steve Cragg, Daniel Lauter, Trance Mission, and Kitaro were adding the instrument to their sound and some of them, like Roach, were doing it to obsession.

Australian groups like Yotho Yindi, Midnight Oil, and Gondwanaland all tapped into their country's roots. But there was also American jazz and avant-garde trombonists like Craig Harris and Stuart Dempster and the British new age duo of Phil Thornton and Stephen Cragg. You could hear didgeridoos framing Fosters beer and Lycra commercials on TV. Ambient-Techno composer Aphex Twin launched his career with the track "Digeridoo," (sic) although it's all synthesizers, and Kate Bush used it back in 1982 on "The Dreaming."

A deceptively simple instrument, the didgeridoo is a tube cut from a few feet of a tree branch that has been hollowed out by termites. Most people are two impatient for that so they bore their's out by hand or make them from PVC pipe and cactus. Players blow into one end somewhat like a trumpet, creating a fundamental low-tone that is shattered into complex overtones. Circular breathing facilitates non-stop drones through which the player grunts, shrieks, sings or hums, often accompanying dancers and songmen.

"Whatever you produce from didgeridoo, you've got to produce for yourself," says Hudson. The 32 year old musician has played the instrument since he was a child growing up on an Australian cattle ranch. "There's no finger holes, there's no reed and the tree that you cut down has been given to you by the termite. That's one of the oldest wind instruments in the world."

The name is an onomatopoeic representation of the didgeridoo's sound created by white settlers. Among the northern tribes of Australia it's called yaraki, mago, and lhambilbilg.

The west got its first taste of the instrument from Rolf Harris's 1963 hit, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport," but today's musicians are looking beyond novelty. Stephen Kent played French horn in England, but then he moved to Australia and discovered the didgeridoo. He often plays it in transformative settings with Lights in a Fat City and Trance Mission." I feel that the voyage in the music is the essence every time I pick up the instrument," says Kent, now living in Oakland. "Whether it's on my own or whether with an audience or just within the group of us. It's definitely about traveling inside."

Metaphysical discourse is a natural by-product of the didgeridoo. Interwoven with Aboriginal spiritual traditions, initiation rites and their living mythology called the Dreamtime, the didgeridoo taps into ancient archetypes. "I think it actually roots people in some deep, genetic, racial memory," offers Kent. A collection of this earlier work called "Family Tree" is a didgeridoo tour de force. Kent articulated a swampy trans-global trance music on the Trance Mission album "Meanwhile" (City of Tribes) and he's played techno on SpaceTime Continuum's "Alien Dreamtime" (Astralwerks).

The didgeridoo is heavily sampled in techno music and Kent believed rave culture was seeking the same tribal experience as the Aborigines. "They want in some way to create a trance-tribal setting for music within the late 20th century context," he observed. "I think that the didgeridoo provides the same thing, coming from a very ancient culture."
The connection with altered states and primal insights is a common thread among didgeridoo players. Avant-garde trombonist and composer Stuart Dempster has played the didgeridoo in a cathedral on his album "In the Great Abbey of Clement VI" (New Albion) and in a water cistern with Pauline Oliveros on "Deep Listening" (New Albion). With circular breathing, he envelopes the listener in thickening, reverberant layers, while his shouts are like cries from the edge.

"I'm interested in the therapeutic aspect," he explains from his home in Seattle. "It's healing for the player and the playee. It feels good, it's substitute yoga. It's more refreshing to play. A trombone isn't refreshing. It tires me out."

Developed in isolation for approximately forty thousand years before the British settled Australia in the 1700s, the didgeridoo is the purist of roots instruments. Those raw sounds are heard on a CD from Smithsonian/Folkways, "Traditional Music of the World 4-Bunggridj-Bunggridj: Wangga Songs" by Alan Maralung."

Once it was brought into the world, however, the didgeridoo begged for cross-cultural interaction. Celtic-Arabic-pygmy-techno-jazz-new age-rock hybrids abounded with Outback, Reconciliation with Aboriginal didgeridoo virtuoso Alan Dargin, Directions in Groove, Sven Vath, The Overlords and Gabrielle Roth and the Mirrors. You can hear a didgeridoo on Kitaro's album, Mandala (Domo Music), played by a former Tibetan Buddhist monk, Nawang Khechog.

Synthesists like Steve Roach have found a natural affinity with the tonal shadings of the didgeridoo. "It's like an ancient vocoder," said Steve Roach, who first heard the instrument in Peter Weir's film "The Last Wave." "It's used to project your voice like a medium and allows you to do things with the voice and consciousness that you wouldn't feel comfortable doing without this conduit between worlds."

On his solo album "Origins" (Fortuna), and "Earth Island" (Hearts of Space) with his collaborative group, Suspended Memories, Roach mixed synthesizers with the organic sounds of percussion and didgeridoo, mapping a surreal landscape of the soul.

No matter how many world fusions are fueled by the didgeridoo, it is bound to the Australian outback and animals like the dingo, kookaburra and emu. "You try to mimic these sounds on the didgeridoo," explains David Hudson, who's solo albums include "Rainbow Serpent" (Celestial Harmonies).

Hudson is no stranger to hybrids, but he believes you can take the didgeridoo out of Australia, but you can't take Australia out of the didgeridoo. "I think folks can play the didgeridoo," he asserted, "but unless they've been to Australia and got the Australian vibe and met and stayed with Aboriginal people then that bit of tree that you're holding in your hand is nothing."

THE END

Didgeridoo Recommendations:
Steve Roach "Origins" and "Artifact"

Dark techno-tribal ruminations from the desert south west with didgeridoo merged in synthesizer textures and deep percussion stomps.

Trance Mission "Meanwhile"

A hallucinatory swirl of ancestral grooves mixed in modern atmospheres. With Stephen Kent on didgeridoo, Kenneth Newby's Asian wind instruments, John Loose's multi-lingual percussion and the spinning improvisations of clarinetist Beth Custer converge in incantatory soundscapes, with a lyricism that's uncommon for the genre.

Stephen Kent "Family Tree"

A collection of Kent's works from his first group, Lights in a Fat City, to Transmission and his solo works.

Outback "Baka"

Great guitar and didgeridoo duo and their first album. The didg player, Graham Wiggins, now records techno-didg grooves as Dr. Didg. Guitarist Martin Craddick went on to form Baka Beyond.

David Hudson "Woolunda"

For pure, unadulterated didgeridoo, you won't do better than David Hudson's solo didg album, "Woolunda", produced for maximum sonic impact by Steve Roach.