Tag: Aboriginal music

The didgeridoo is often presented today as though it was traditionally used by Aboriginal people across Australia. The historical evidence does not support that view.

The earliest written records are concentrated in northern Australia. Thomas Braidwood Wilson described the instrument at Raffles Bay in 1835, Ludwig Leichhardt recorded the Eboro near Port Essington in 1845, and John Lort Stokes also described it in northern Australia in 1846. These early records all come from the Top End.

Later research by Alice Moyle also found that the didgeridoo had a much more limited traditional range. She argued that it probably began in northern Australia and spread into other northern areas over time. Some of that spread may have happened before European settlement, but there is also clear evidence of later spread. On Mornington Island, Moyle recorded in the 1960s that didgeridoo playing was a fairly recent musical innovation and that Lardil people said it had been adopted from Arnhem Land only within the previous twenty to thirty years.

The evidence therefore points to the didgeridoo being a northern Australian instrument that later spread much more widely. Its modern use as a symbol of Aboriginal Australia as a whole should not be assumed to reflect how widely it was traditionally used before European settlement.

 

The didgeridoo was not simply a stand-alone musical instrument. Historical accounts most often record it as an accompaniment to singing, dancing and ceremony.

Leichhardt described the Eboro accompanying songs near Port Essington. Baldwin Spencer later recorded bamboo trumpets sounding during initiation ceremonies in the Northern Territory, alongside singing, clapping and struck sticks.

In Spencer’s account of a Kakadu ceremony, the ordinary trumpet was called Jiboulu and its sacred counterpart Purakakka. The instrument could therefore have a ceremonial meaning as well as provide rhythm and sound for performers.

Its use varied between communities and occasions. The evidence supports song accompaniment, dance and ceremony strongly; broader claims about a single universal “purpose” should be avoided.

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.

No. Boomerangs could be weapons, but they were also tools and ceremonial objects. Reducing them to weapons alone hides much of their historical function.

The National Museum lists a wide range of uses: hunting birds and game, killing fish in trapped pools, fighting, digging for root vegetables, scraping ashes from fires, making fire, and being used in dance and music as percussion instruments when clapped together.

This wider use helps explain why boomerangs took so many forms. A heavy fighting stick, a bird-flushing returning boomerang, and a paired percussion instrument did not need identical shapes. Their functions helped shape their design.

The most accurate picture is therefore of a multifunctional technology: tool, weapon, ceremonial object and musical implement.