White man - black instrument


Is it alright for non-Aborigines to play the didgeridoo?

Didgeridoo is a traditional musical instrument and has been used in story telling by Aborigines for millenia. In last 2-3 decades the instrument is taken up a non-traditional use both by Aborigines and non-Aborigines. How can this use be reconciled with an instrument defining 'Aboriginalism'?

Charlie McMahon has been the first non-Aboriginal musician to introduce didgeridoo to rock music. He started in 1979 with Midnight Oil. In 1980 he played in America with the Greatful Dead and Van Morrison's band and performed as support on a Timothy Leary lecture tour. In 1981 he formed Gondwanaland. In Terra Incognita - their first recording, which was made in 1982 - he tried to capture the surroundings he had worked in (the vast regions of the Western Desert of central Australia), the 'soudscapes for landscape' in his words. He often returned to work with Midnight Oil, as they shared the same philosophy:

'the sense of our music is space ... absorbing the great open space of Australia and putting it down in a musical form'
as Rob Hirst stated.

McMahon is acknowledged as the most technically accomplished didgeridoo player in the world. For his style is known for its rapid breathing and rhythmic complexity, he accentuates the foundational drone by overlapping multi-tonal splashes and interjections.

It is interesting how he dismisses the healing and other mysthifications of the didgeridoo:

'I do know that didgeridoo playing is incredibly good for your health. I haven't had a cold since 1983 and I put it down to the fact that 'du playing really teaches you to breathe. It does, I think, slow your heart rate and makes you breathe more efficiently. But so far as those other claims, that's where I draw the line. I don't go and plagiarise that Dreamtime stuff'
and he did not, not even with his didgeridoo playing. He did not appropriated traditional Aboriginal styles for commercial use. He put didge sound in a new rhythmical and instrumental contexts.

'I get on pretty good with traditional players ... I play with Mark Atkins a fair bit. I think it's great that the race relations aren't so bad that I can do what I do. The reason why I've got such a good relation with the traditional people is that I don't plagiarise.'

McMahon has de-mystified the techniques and content of didgeridoo practices by trying to create sounds that have not been heard in original aboriginal contexts. His experience teaches us that it is alright for white man (and women) to play the didgeridoo, if that playing is not a plain commercialisation of aboriginal traditions and believes, not sacrilege, it doesn't interfere with aboriginal traditional play and life.