stockie wrote:
just had some random thoughts about the phrasing and playing of didgeridoo...... I am aware that the first westerners to hear didge was in Western Arnhem Land and the term didgeridoo comes from the playing of did ger idoo down the stick
The first part is kinda correct with qualification. I wrote somewhere that the word "didgeridoo" comes from non-Indigenous ears hearing the instrument being played probably in the western parts of Arnhem Land, but it could equally be in the north-west region of the Northern Territory around what was then known as Palmerston (now called Darwin, with the name "Palmerston" now used for an outlying municipality about 20 km south-east of Darwin).
There is no concrete 'proof' of this, it is mere conjecture, because the earliest attempts to settle in the Northern Territory were in the NW region of the NT in the early 1800s.
The actual first such attempted settlement was at Fort Dundas on Melville Island in 1824, but since the Tiwi people do not have the didgeridoo as part of their culture, it is not likely that European ears first heard it there although that cannot be entirely ruled out as there is evidence that the Tiwi Islanders had occasional contact with Aboriginal people from the Goulburn Islands and Cobourg Peninsula both of which are didgeridoo-playing areas.
As an aside, in those early days there were no inland routes connecting the south with the north, you had to take a ship from Sydney all the way around the coast of north of Australia to get to Fort Dundas. For those interested in history, there are documents from those early days suggesting that the settlers and convicts had considerable trouble from the Tiwi people, who were anything but friendly. It has become something of local legend now that the Tiwi Islanders were fierce warriors. Letterstick Band from Maningrida even has a song dedicated to them: "Tiwi Warriors"!
When Ford Dundas was abandoned because of various problems (spearings, termites, cyclones etc.), attempts were then made to settle Fort Wellington and Port Essington on the Cobourg Peninsula. The earliest didgeridoo specimens that were collected by Europeans and that are now housed in museums around the world come from the Cobourg Peninsula from the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s etc. period. iDIDJ Australia has 2 such instruments, which were known in the local Aboriginal language as
ebroo as indicated in a publication from 1835. The word 'didgeridoo' did not come into effect until Herbert Basedow's book
The Australian Aboriginal published in 1925 though there are some reports of the word appearing earlier in newspapers. Basedow actually spells it "didjeridoo" - with a 'j' not a 'g'. Prior to 1925, however, you'd more likely see 'drone pipe' or 'wooden trumpet' in the literature.
Basedow does not explain how the word 'didjeridoo' came about although it is interesting to note that he describes the following:
Quote:
When using the "trumpet", the operator blows into the end having the smaller diameter, with a vibratory motion of the lips, and at the same time sputters into the tube indistinct words which frequently sound like "tidjarudu, tidjarudu, tidjarudu".
Does that answer your question Stockie?
It is not clear in which area Basedow heard this "tidjarudu, tidjarudu, tidjarudu" but it is worth pointing out that he had spent time on the Tiwi Islands in 1913 or earlier as he wrote an article
Notes on the Aborigines of Melville and Bathurst Islands in the
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published in 1913. And to get to the Tiwi Islands, Basedow would have had to pass through Darwin I presume, and indeed, in his book
The Australian Aboriginal he makes mention of a bamboo trumpet used in a Larrekiya (sic) performance, the Larrakia being the original people of the greater Darwin region.
So that's the reason why I think the word 'didgeridoo' originated from European observations in Western Arnhem Land or the NW NT region because the "modern history" of these areas predate that of, say, north-east Arnhem Land. Remember that Port Darwin was established in 1869, and by the 1870s and 1880s the Gold Rush at Pine Creek (and the Australian Overland Telegraph Line) had seen an influx of non-Indigenous people consisting of prospectors/miners, government officials, and the like. In contrast, the "modern history" of north-east Arnhem Land started only in the 1930s, prior to this it was only pearlers, trepangers and traders who had any reason to be in the area. And by the 1930s, 'didjeridoo' was already in use public use.
Anyway, if you like your history, the above might be interesting to you, if not, have a yawn and click onto another subject...
Guan
