The didgeridoo (yidaki) is not the sort of instrument you would
expect to find on pages connected with western classical music. However, in
recent years it has found a unique place in Australian classical music,
particularly through the collaboration of composer
Peter
Sculthorpe and performer/composer
William
Barton.
The highly distinctive sound of the didgeridoo (and let�s face it, this
is an Australian website and we Australians abbreviate everything) or �didge�
had been used from time to as an element of �local colour� . until classical
composers started to regard it more seriously. By the 1970s George Dreyfus
had included the didgeridoo in chamber music and several other composers
were looking more seriously at the possibilities that the instrument
provided. To be more precise, it wasn�t so much the instrument but the
performers that were attracting attention. On the surface, the didgeridoo is
just a piece of hollowed-out wood, but in the hands of a skilled performer
this simple instrument is capable of rich and complex musical expression.
In western classical music, wind instruments are generally used for
melodies or fanfares or combined into groups to provide harmonies. The
didgeridoo on the other hand provides a single basic drone note (rendered
continuous by �circular breathing�) which the skilled performer can vary use
of harmonics and vocal interpolations introduced to the air supply. In
traditional music these techniques are often used to imitate the sound of
animals. Of particular significance is the fact that the performer can set
up a percussive beat in the wind supply. This beat can often be quite
complex and renders the instrument separate from the western classical
tradition where wind instruments are not expected to also act as the
percussive rhythm makers.
Probably the most significant integration of didgeridoo into the western
classical tradition came around 2000 when the composer Peter Sculthorpe
began his collaboration with the brilliant didgeridoo player William Barton.
Sculthorpe included didgeridoo parts in several of his new works such as his
Requiem and Earth Cry. However somewhat more remarkable was that Sculthorpe
went back and rearranged a number of his earlier works to included
didgeridoo and the result was the it sounded as though it had always been
there.
It is believed that the didgeridoo has been played for around 1,000 years
by the Aboriginal people of parts of Northern Australia. Known as the
yidaki, it's current traditional custodians are the Galpu clan of the
Yolngu people of Arnhem Land. At the the time of first European contact, the
didgeridoo was not part of the culture of Aboriginal peoples in southern and
eastern Australia. However it is now widely used as an iconic symbol of
Aboriginal culture Australia wide and often heard at ceremonial occasions
honouring local Aboriginal peoples regardless of whether the didegiridoo was
part of the long term culture of that region.
The spellings 'didgeridoo' and 'didjeridu' have been the most common.
However in the 1990s the hybrid spelling of 'didjeridoo' seems to have
stemmed from the name adopted by a European club for marketing purposes. As
a result the 'didjeridoo' spelling is often encountered in commercial and
popular culture environments. After speaking to a number of Aboriginal
performers we have stuck with the spelling most of them feel comfortable
with - 'didgeridoo'. It should be noted that because of the large number of
Aboriginal languages, the instrument is called by different names in
different areas and the local name is usually used when used for local
ceremonies. In fact, to complicate matters further, we are not even sure if
the word 'didgeridoo' is Aboriginal in origin. A popularly repeated story
says the name originates from the Gaelic words meaning 'black trumpeter' but
to date we have found no reputable historical data to confirm this theory.
Selected didgeridoo sheet music: