“The Didgeridoo”

Over the two hundred years from 1770 that followed Captain James Cook‘s discovery‘ of the eastern coast of what is now called Australia but was then New Holland, information about Aboriginal art was always present. The Indigenous cultures of Australia are the oldest living cultures in the world. One of the reasons they have survived for so long is their ability to adapt to change. Despite removing indigenous Aboriginals from their land, separating them, damaging their culture, impressing our beliefs on to them (and using violence); despite our actions, a rich cultural heritage of our human past still lives in North Arnhem Land. It is a priceless heirloom that we must do everything to protect.

We have much to remember about ourselves and to understand what worked well for different indigenous tribes who co-existed for thousands of years before outside interference. In the` nineteenth century Aboriginal art itself began to flourish in the low-art practice of craft objects and watercolor paintings made for sale by Christian missions and the tourist industries. In the twentieth century, from the 1950s onwards excellent books devoted to Aboriginal art began to appear, and by the 1970s there were many. With the introduction of missions, roads and infrastructure, the art of making the didgeridoo seemed to then spread across most parts of Australia.

The word didgeridoo comes from the word bamboo. Some believe the didgeridoo is the oldest known instrument, from the Australian Aboriginal culture (Latin meaning “in the beginning”). Most researchers believe that the first ones were made from bamboo sticks but now are made from eucalyptus trees. Most of the Aborigine tribes came up with their own name for it. Some of the names are, artawin, garnbak, djibolu and yirtakki.

A didgeridoo is a hollow tube that can be made of any material– wood, metal,