Didgeridoo

The didgeridoo is made from a eucalyptus trunk or branch naturally hollowed out by termites, a process a maker selects for rather than replicates artificially, finished with a rim of beeswax shaped to the player's mouth and producing a continuous low drone when played correctly. Sustaining that drone without a break depends on circular breathing, a technique in which the player breathes in through the nose while simultaneously pushing air out through the mouth using air stored in the cheeks, allowing an essentially unbroken tone that can continue for many minutes at a time, a specialised skill that takes considerable practice to master.

The instrument originates in the traditional culture of Arnhem Land and the Top End of northern Australia, and Berndt and Berndt's survey of Aboriginal Australian tradition situates it as one of several distinct regional instrument traditions across the continent rather than a single instrument used identically everywhere, since many Aboriginal groups outside its home region historically had no didgeridoo tradition of their own at all. A skilled maker also selects the wax rim carefully, since its shape directly affects how easily a player can sustain the circular breathing technique the instrument requires, making the finishing work as important to a good instrument as the choice of the hollowed branch itself.

Within its originating communities the didgeridoo carries genuine ceremonial functions, accompanying specific songs and dances at gatherings, and custom in many though not all of the traditions that use it has historically restricted who may play the instrument, with playing traditionally reserved to men in numerous communities, a protocol still actively discussed and asserted by Aboriginal custodians today rather than a settled matter of the past.

Over the past several decades the didgeridoo has also become widely known and played far outside Australia, adopted into popular and world music contexts by non Indigenous musicians in a way that has generated real, ongoing discussion within Aboriginal communities about cultural protocol, appropriate use and the difference between an instrument's ceremonial home context and its increasingly common life as a general musical curiosity abroad. This tension between the didgeridoo's deep ceremonial standing in its country of origin and its very wide informal popularity elsewhere is now itself a documented and actively discussed part of the instrument's modern history rather than a side note to it. Some Aboriginal organisations and musicians have responded by developing guidance and licensing arrangements for non Indigenous performers, an ongoing effort to balance the instrument's wider popularity against the community's continued authority over its own sacred and cultural material.