Fast Fact Tag: Australian music

Early European writers often called the didgeridoo a “trumpet”, “horn”, “pipe” or even a “conch”. They were using familiar European words to describe an Aboriginal instrument for which they did not yet have a common English name.

Herbert Basedow, writing in 1925, called it a “bamboo trumpet”, a “drone-pipe” and a “didjeridoo”. Alice Moyle later noted that Baldwin Spencer had called the Australian wooden trumpet a “conch” when making his 1912 sound recordings.

These descriptions were based on how the instrument looked and sounded: a hollow tube played by blowing with vibrating lips. They did not mean that the instrument was literally the same as a European brass trumpet.

Old references to a “trumpet” can therefore be important evidence for the didgeridoo. But context still matters — not every hollow tube, horn or trumpet-like instrument recorded in Australia was necessarily a didgeridoo.

The “didgeridoo” is made of wood. This wood can be either bamboo (all the sources agree on this), woolly-butt eucalyptus, or the green stem of a native hibiscus bush (according to Herbert Basedow). Spencer, in his recordings of Australian Aboriginal singing also mentioned trumpets can be “made out of a hollow branch of gum trees, ironwood etc.” 

A typical didgeridoo size varies from 2 to 9 feet long. Roderick Flanagan describes it as having “about three feet in length” and Spencer said “it measured 7-9 feet in length.” Spencer also reported a trumpet which was “five feet in length” and had a diameter at larger end of 2.5 inches and 2 inches at the mouth while Basedow asserts that it should be “four to five feet long” which aligns with the trumpet observed in Native Tribe of the Northern Territory of Australia.

The mouthpiece was often refined for comfort and to create a proper seal. Spencer observed that “as a general rule, the mouth end is coated with wax so that the lips can fit on tightly,” a detail also mentioned in the Native Tribes of Central Australia that the end is “covered with a circle of resin so as to make the margins smoother.”

The external surface was frequently decorated, transforming it into a personal and cultural artifact. Spencer in the Native Tribes of Central Australia described two such decorated instruments in his possession: one was ornamented with “alternate circles of yellow ochre and white kaolin,” while the other featured “two rings of white kaolin” connected by longitudinal lines.”

Herbert Basedow called it a “bamboo trumpet”, “drone-pipe” or “didjeridoo.” Sir Baldwin Spencer in his analysis of recordings of the Australian Aboriginal singing suggested the more specific term “conch,” drawing a comparison to shell trumpets despite it being made of wood or bamboo, noting it was “commonly called a trumpet by the whites, but really a kind of conch, made out of a hollow bough.”

Spencer, in his analysis of recordings, referred to the work of Roth, who documented the term “yiki-yiki” for a long wooden trumpet used in areas of the Cape York Peninsula. In his own documentation of Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia, Spencer also listed the sacred names “jiboulu” for the everyday trumpet and its ritual counterpart, “Purakakka.”

From Central Australia, Spencer and Gillen described the “ilpirra” (or “ulpirra”), a shorter, rudimentary tube used in love-magic ceremonies, which they distinguished as a “rudimentary trumpet” that was sung through to intensify the voice rather than played with vibrating lips.

The name “didgeridoo” was first used in a 1908 newspaper account “Retribution,” where it was written as “did-gery-do,” phonetically capturing the rhythmic sound heard on a Northern Territory cattle run. The term simply did not exist in print until the early 20th century.

Claims that the didgeridoo has been played for 40,000 years or more are common, but there is no historical or archaeological evidence that proves such an age.

The instrument was clearly in Aboriginal use before large-scale European settlement of northern Australia. Collet Barker’s 1829 journal describes a musician at Raffles Bay using a large hollow cane about three feet long, and Thomas Braidwood Wilson’s published 1835 account describes and illustrates the instrument there.

Those records prove that the instrument existed by the early nineteenth century — not that it had existed for tens of thousands of years. Alice Moyle later examined its distribution, language evidence and rock art and proposed a much more recent history, including possible movement into Arnhem Land within the previous thousand years or less.

Moyle’s dating is a scholarly interpretation, not an exact birthday for the instrument. The important point is that a claim of “40,000 years” is not a date established by the available evidence.

No. Historical writers recorded several hollow tubes or trumpet-like instruments, and it is risky to label every one of them a didgeridoo.

Spencer and Gillen described a short Central Australian instrument called the ilpirra or ulpirra as a “rudimentary trumpet”. Their description indicates that it was used by singing or voicing through the tube rather than simply being played in the same way as the better-known northern lip-buzzed didgeridoo.

Alice Moyle later noted that old recordings and written descriptions included different trumpet forms, including the “conch”, yiki-yiki and northern wooden trumpets. Some are clearly connected with the didgeridoo tradition; others need to be treated separately unless the evidence is strong enough.

That distinction matters when reading old sources. A writer’s use of the word “trumpet” is a clue, not automatic proof that the object was the same instrument now called a didgeridoo.

No. Some of the earliest documented didgeridoos were made from bamboo or hollow cane, not eucalyptus wood.

Collet Barker’s 1829 account describes a “large hollow cane” about three feet long. Ludwig Leichhardt described the Eboro in 1845 as “a long tube of bamboo”, and John Lort Stokes wrote in 1846 of an ebroo made from bamboo about two to three feet long.

Later writers also recorded wooden instruments. Herbert Basedow described both bamboo trumpets and instruments made from a long hollow limb of woolly-butt eucalyptus. Baldwin Spencer likewise recorded trumpets made from bamboo or hollow tree branches.

The evidence shows that eucalyptus wood was an important traditional material, but it was not the only one. Bamboo, cane and other naturally hollow wood were also used in different northern areas.

The didgeridoo is now one of the best-known symbols of Aboriginal Australia, but that national image isn’t reflected in its documented history.

Nineteenth-century accounts repeatedly place the instrument in Australia’s tropical north — including Raffles Bay and Port Essington. Early descriptions of many southern Aboriginal musical traditions record other forms of accompaniment without showing the same instrument.

Alice Moyle’s research showed just how varied Aboriginal music was. Paired sticks, boomerang clapsticks, rasps, animal-skin drums, body percussion and other forms of accompaniment existed alongside the didgeridoo. It was not historically the universal accompaniment to Aboriginal song.

During the twentieth century the instrument spread more widely through missions, travel between communities, recordings, performance and the Aboriginal arts. Mornington Island is a useful example: Moyle recorded that local people regarded didgeridoo playing there as a fairly recent adoption from Arnhem Land. Its modern national importance is genuine, but it should not be mistaken for evidence that every Aboriginal group traditionally used it.