Fast Fact Tag: cultural symbol

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.