Australian Aboriginal Music

 

Australian Aboriginal music (aka Indigenous Australian music) includes the music of Australian aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who are collectively called Indigenous Australians. The music is very much part of the social fabric of their life, their history and their culture. It has a haunting and mysterious quality that draws the listener into the history, culture and the ancient dreamtime of the Aboriginal people. In other words, music is a vital part of Indigenous Australians' cultural maintenance.

Aboriginal people throughout most of Australia believe that in the beginning of time, in the Dreaming, there were no visible landmarks; the world was flat. As time progressed, creatures emerged from the ground and had the power to change at will from their animal to their human form. These original ancestral beings created all the features of the landscape in the area in which their lives were spent. Throughout their lives on earth, they left inseminating powers in the soil; they also created, and taught to others, many songs including those recounting the history of their own lives, songs for healing the wounded and the sick, injuring the enemy, including rain, arresting the flood, or causing the wind to turn back. A song is sung as a series comprising many short verses, each of which tells about a particular event or place associated with the ancestor; or the performance may be a full ceremonial one which includes portrayal of relevant events in the performance of dances accompanied by the singing of the appropriate verses.

The Australian Aboriginal people developed a number of rare, unique and interesting musical instruments, such as: didgeridoo (aka didjeridu, and other regional names), bullroarer, gum-leaf, clapsticks.

The most well known is the didgeridoo - one of the oldest musical instruments to date. It originated in Arnhem Land on the northern coastline of central Australia, and has some similarity to bamboo trumpets and even bronze horns developed in other cultures. The didgeridoo is a simple wooden tube - a log hollowed out by fire or termites and cleaned out, or from bamboo with septa removed, and a mouthpiece of wax or resin is moulded to one end. The inside diameter measures about 30 mm at the end that is blown, and about 50 mm at the opposite end. Different tube lengths (normally 100-160 cm) produce different sounds.

The didgeridoo has no finger holes and is played by blowing through vibrating lips directly into the mouthpiece. In traditional situations it is played only by men, usually as an accompaniment to ceremonial or recreational singing, or, much more rarely, as a solo instrument. Today it is commonly considered the national instrument of the Australian Aborigines and is world renowned as a unique and iconic instrument.







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