Ahoy all!
Unfortunately, I don’t have a trumpet to blare out my excitement about the great response my application video has received for THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD, but that’s not holding me back from trying to make some kind of noise…enter didgeridoo!
What’s a didgeridoo, you ask? Well, it looks like a big thick hollowed out tree branch that hippies often carry with them on their backpacks. Maybe you thought that big long stick was a backpackers choice of self protection? Well, actually it is the preferred musical instrument of hippies the world over - but traditionally the Yirdaki (aka didgeridoo) is played by the aboriginal people of northern Australia.
The didgeridoo is like a wooden trumpet or drone pipe that some claim could be 40,000 years old, and possibly the oldest aerophone instrument in the world. The Australian didgeridoo was traditionally used by Aborigines to communicate calls and messages between tribes. The Aborigines believed that the didgeridoo was a gift from the spirit world to the physical world; connecting them together through rhythmic musical vibrations. In some aboriginal cultures only men were allowed to play the didgeridoo, while the women played the clapsticks.
The wood most often used for the “Didge” comes from living eucalyptus trees endemic to northern Australia. The tree trunks have been naturally hollowed out by a specific type of termite that only eats the heart of the tree. The length of the instument varies from 1-3 metres (the longer the length the lower the pitch). To play this instrument you must be able to continuously create a harmonic drone sound with a special circular breathing technique; breathing in the nose and out the mouth.
So, lets stop this chit chat and give it a try….
It isn’t going that well. It seems to me that I am just blowing hot air and spittle out the bottom of the “Didge,” and not to mention angering the spirits. It looks to me that I will have to spend a lot of time practicing my circular breathing and lip loosening…maybe I will just forget about it and make some noise with clapsticks instead.
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