I first heard the Didgeridoo at a very early age on my dad's Folkways LP of Aboriginal music recorded on locations in the Australian Outback. I always thought it was a drum ( I was too young to read the liner notes) because of how the instrument is articulated.
Many years later I'd all but forgotten about the Didgeridoo when I read in Duke Ellington's biography, "Music is My Mistress", his account of hearing didgeridoos while on a musical ambassadorship state department tour of Asia. Duke considered the Didgeridoo to be the most expressive instrument he'd ever heard, and even incorporated the instrument on the album, "The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse".
In the '80s when I was the New Age buyer at The COOP I met a couple of nice guys who called themselves, "DidgeriDuo". Yup, 2 guys playing rhythmic set pieces on didgeridoos augmented by processed low frequency extension and sparse synthesizer shadings. Before you commit "Contempt Prior To Investigation", these guys put together compelling pieces that actually ROCK. I treasure these albums and have dubbed the cassettes onto CDRs which I've ripped into iTunes at high resolution. "Boom-Shaka-Laka!"
The Didgeridoo is capable, in the right hands (Aboriginal master David Hudson is, for me, the best), of complex ranges of shading and by blowing using circular breathing techniques, beautifully primitive dancing and dream inducing rhythms.
I feel a Walkabout coming on...
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