THE DIDJERIDU AND THE OVERDUB

Technologising and Transposing Aural Images of Aboriginality

KARL NEUENFELDT

This article investigates how aural 'images' of aboriginality are technologised and transposed across cultures, with special regard to the didjeridu. In doing this, the study involves consideration of both the traditional background of the didjeridu and its use and the central role of technology in contemporary music. This in turn involves study of producers and performers of didjeridu music working in non-traditional Aboriginal music and their relation to both 'authentic' Australian culture and the "universal pop aesthetic" identified by Simon Frith (1989). This article draws on a range of academic sources, representations and interviews, all of which contribute to an holistic overview of the technologisation and transposition of an aural image of Aboriginality betwixt soundscapes and "humanscapes" (Agar, 1986).

SOUND AND THE INTERPLAY OF TECHNOLOGY

Before investigating the medium of Aboriginal music, an integral part of the symbolic construction of aboriginality in Australia, we need consider other essential components: the medium of sound and the interplay of technology.

Technically, sound is pressure waves and vibrations converted into nerve impulses and sensed physiologically. Sound is also information and "sentiment" (Feld, 1982) ­ often produced and perceived socio­culturally. The perception of indigenous peoples by dominant cultures, and vice versa, is profoundly influenced by sounds ­ the most evocative sounds are often musical ­ and communities themselves can be defined and described sonically.

Sounds also are part of power relationships, so in order to facilitate access to a "space" within the dominant culture's soundscape, indigenous peoples need consider the relationship between power and technology. At base, technology is power; in the context of popular music, power is the control of sounds. As Jones has noted "the ability to record sound is power over sound" (1990a:19). The evolution of recording technology itself exhibits increasing power over how sound is performed, captured, replicated, renovated, re­mixed and industrialised and how those who strive to control sound (recording engineers, artists, re­mix engineers) are themselves constrained within the institutions, structures and power relations of political economies.

These relationships between contemporary music and technology present several paradoxes. On one level, technology's extensive control over sounds runs contrary, in a sense, to the ethos and ideology of pop music (especially rock) idealised as being spontaneous, inspirational and creative; however, those very same controls over sound can facilitate recordings providing at least the illusion of spontaneity, inspiration and creativity even though the musicians (if there even are any) need not perform at the same time, in the same place, or even ever meet face to face. The paradoxes are resolvable, perhaps, if technology is used "artistically," but that is an aesthetic judgment that also required contextualisation.

Technology, as medium and means, is critical in understanding contemporary music;
as Jones (1990:1) has noted:

"Without technology, popular music would not exist in its present form. Without electronics, and without the accompanying technical supports and technical experimentation, there could not be the mass production of music, and therefore there would not be the mass mediated popular music. Of equal importance, without technology there could not be the creation of sounds that are today intimately associated with popular music .... In turn, production and consumption of recordings are profoundly technological."

Technology as process and practice is also important. Jensen suggests that appreciating the relationship between technology and music is dependent on understanding processual relations ­ cautioning that technologies should not be reified: Technologies are not things ­ they are instead processes manifested as products. (Jensen, 1990:7).

Consequently, the contemporary use of didjeridu arises partially out of these interplays of the processes of sound and technology, but also partially out of an ancient cultural musical tradition that remains relevant to the formation and expression of contemporary Aboriginal identity.
 
 
 

THE DIDJERIDU WITHIN THE CONTEXT
OF TRADITIONAL ABORIGINAL MUSIC

Discussions of the nature of Aboriginal music are complex since they involve consideration of the very nature of Aboriginal music itself. There is a dilemma about defining the form. Should the definition be an historically purist one or should it be contemporary and catholic. Wild has argued that:

"Two clear alternates are to define it as 'music performed/created by Aboriginal people and as "music which has no non­Aboriginal influences'. While many non­Aboriginal people may choose the latter definition, most Aboriginal people would choose the former. If the former definition is adopted, the description must include rock, reggae and country music created and performed by Aboriginal musicians, mostly living in country towns and large cities. If the latter definition is adopted there is still a variety of musical styles and contexts to take account of This dichotomy between 'traditional' and 'non­traditional' is not absolute, since there are forms of Aboriginal music in­between, but it is a useful distinction .... (1992:336)"

The first definition is preferable for two reasons. First, it privileges an Aboriginal perspective. Second, it highlights the fact that so­called traditional musics are not as closed to outside influences or threatened by those influences as some research (and researchers) might suggest. Consequently, they are not necessarily embalmed in the ethnographic present of the ethnomusicological logical past of field recordings ­ they are malleable and dynamic, integrated into contemporary recordings and evolving musical genres. However, before delving into contemporary uses of didjeridu it is essential to situate it within traditions that inform the present.

"A critical aspect of traditional Aboriginal music is that it is primarily a vocal art form (centred on songs) rather than an instrumental one with " . . . each verse consist [in"] of a limited number of words with many different meanings. The rhythmic relationships between the words and accompanying musical instruments are constantly shifted and varied" (Wild, 1987:331)."

"Percussion (idiophones such as clapsticks, rasps and seed rattles) and the didjeridu (an aerophone ­ with sound produced through air­vibration) also provide accompaniment to both song and dance, but "no truly melodic instrument is present to compete with the vocal melody and obscure the words . . . aboriginal musical instruments are essentially rhythmic in purpose . . . " (ibid: 334). Lauridsen has noted, as well, a signficant relationship exist [in] between vocal pitches and didjeridoo harmonics (1983)."
 

Historically, the didjeridu was limited in dispersal and use; it was not a pan Aboriginal instrument. It was found only in distinct climate regions of Australia where appropriate trees or bamboo grew; they were also noted in contiguous contact or trading zones. The term "didjeridu" itself is of unknown origin. Jones ( 1980:461 ) suggests that " . . . although now commonly called by this name, which is probably of European onomatopoeic intent, some 40 aboriginal names for it are used in the various northern regions where it is used, from the north of Western Australia, through the Arnhem Land peninsula, to northern Queensland". While Moyle suggest that "the non­Aboriginal term 'didjeridoo' has been derived quite recently from sounds made by this lip­buzzed aerophone" (321).

When making a didjeridu, minor alterations (stripping exterior bark, applying a rim of beeswax or eucalyptus gum to the mouth end, slightly thinning the interior walls, painting the exterior with totemic symbols and bark painting techniques) are often the only changes made to the basic material structure. Alan Dargin, a performer and recording artist, related the following information on another mode of making a didjeridu:

"Traditionally they are made by termites and white ants being put through the centre, but there is another way You go out and find your branch and you split it in half using a stone axe... Then what you do is hollow it out yourself, then glue it back together using beeswax, or certain glues you can get from certain trees...( 1992)"

Generally, the instrument varies in length from 1 to 1.5 meters and an internal diameter from 3.5 cm at the mouth end to 7.5 cm at the trumpet end. Consequently, didjeridus are limited as to the musical pitches they can produce; the general range is between the notes D­flat and G ­ which has a bearing on its application within pop music. Traditionally they were used solely by men ­ which has a bearing on their pedagogic use with female Aboriginal music students.

From the perspective of technology and material culture, then, the traditional Australian didjeridu could serve as a prime example of "low­tech". Contemporary didjeridus, however, are also fashioned from materials like "high­tech" PVC plastic pipe or tubular "found" objects such as vacuum cleaner hoses, golf club tube liners and iron pipes.

Jones states that: "it is against the comparative lack of ingenuity and invention elsewhere in the world [with analogous type instruments] that the Australian Aborigines' use of the instrument must be seen, since what they do with it appears to be without precedent or parallel" ( 1973: 270). So regardless of the material and level of technology employed, the challenge remains of how to make culturally relevant and aesthetically pleasing music from an instrument that, in essence, is without much artifice: "an end­blown, straight, natural trumpet, without separate mouthpiece" (Jones, 1980:461).

It is at the level of performance and articulatory technique and cultural value that the simplicity of the instrument is belied by its aesthetic potential and cultural importance. Jones has commented:

"[It is] through the incredibly difficult and highly­skilled playing techniques developed by Aboriginal performers on this instrument, and through the extremely elaborate musical styles to which it had given rise, [that] the didjeridoo is a unique and astonishing achievement that deserves to be widely recognized and respected wherever artistic accomplishments valued (1973:269) .

".. The didjeridu player has transformed his simple wooden trumpet from a crude signalling device or elemental spirit voice into a music instrument of enormous potential, capable of supplying all the non vocal musical requirements of his culture (Ibid:27 1 ) . . . Though he lacks technology and materials, and is unfamiliar with the concept of mouthpiece, reeds, slide or finger­holes, he has nevertheless made a crude implement into a virtuoso musical instrument through the employment of musical imagination and physical skills of a very high order (1980:462)."

In other words, a didjeridu may look simple and sound simplistic but it is neither.

PRODUCERS AND PERFORMERS OF THE DIDJERIDU
IN CONTEMPORARY NON­TRADITIONAL ABORIGINAL MUSIC

The following ethnographic accounts by Aboriginal and non­Aboriginal musicians provide information and insights about technologisations and transpositions and the on­going processes of didjeridu's incorporation into the "universal pop aesthetic". The informants whose observations follow cover a range of contemporary Australian artists, producers and technicians; each is professionally and commercially recognised within their areas of expertise and interest.

The following four sections are divided into two main sections. The first focuses on Mark Moffit, a record producer and engineer; and Makuma Yunupingu, Hughie Benjamin and Stu Kellaway ­ musicians with the "Aboriginal" band Yothu Yindi. This section primarily emphasises the challenges of the processes of technologisation. The second focuses on Charlie McMahon, a musician with the group Gondwanaland, and Richard Walley, a musician and playwright. Here the emphasis is on the challenges of the process of transposition. Overall, the informants are not presented as a definitive sample, rather they are representative in that the information they impart allows for logical inference with regard to various means of technologising and transposing didjeridu ­ and thinking about it.
 

1 . TECHNOLOGISATION

a. MARK MOFFIT

Mark Moffit describes himself as a "mainstream' pop music producer (and recording engineer) with a long list of credits with Australian artists as diverse as John Farnham, Neil Finn, Anne Kirkpatrick, and recently the most successful "Aboriginal" band to date, Yothu Yindi. While recording the hit song Treaty and the album Tribal Voice he and the band responded innovatively to the challenges of melding traditional elements in Yothu Yindi's music with the standard rock and roll rhythm section of bass, drums, guitar and keyboard.

Moffit commented on how the didjeridu was recorded in order to blend it with the rhythm section's backing tracks for the non­traditional songs on the album:

"Technically, [what we did] was figure out a nay to play along with each yidaki [didjeridu] on a guitar string and tune the guitar to it .... and then look at that note on the tuner and put that note on the tape machine at concert pitch and then tune [ the tape machine] down [with the vari­ speed] to where that note read ­ cuz there's no other way of doing it. And that helped a lot because when it's in tune it really makes a big difference with a rock track; when it's not it's a terrible sound. [Then] as soon as we'd done the overdub we'd just flick[the recording machine] back [to normal speed] and give it a listen. You have to tune it by ear, and use that as a tuning reference. There is no other way to do it cuz the tuner just won't read the [didjeridu]; it goes all over the place because of the overtones.*

As the didjeridu is integral to the sound and intent of Yothu Yindi's music, in effect the backing tracks were "tuned" to the didjeridu because it is problematic to "tune" the didjeridu to the backing tracks given the variability in its lengths and tonalities (due to humidity, etc. ) and the variable tones they produce consequently.

The clapsticks (bilma) are also integral to the traditional aspects of the music and occasionally received technological "fine­tuning":

"There were a few areas where the main bilma (clapstick) player, who sings a lot of the traditional stuff up on stage, had a tendency to push ahead of the beat and that sort of stuff. So . . . we just actually sampled him in the [tracks] where it needed to be on the beat]. I just sampled one of his beats and flew it in from a sampler [triggered] off the snare drum so it was in time. I needed to do that so it just didn't sound so wide, because people are just so used to hearing a tight percussion sound . There's a lot of it we left, on the rocky things; where it's a bit wide on the snare, it doesn't matter."

* All unsourced quotations in this and subsequent sections are taken from interviews with the author conducted between 1990 and 1992. *

Amidst the accoutrements of modern recording, sampling and synthesising technology some much more basic issues arose, such as keeping the didjeridus pliable in a southern climate more temperate than Yothu Yindi's tropical homeland in the Northern Territory: "We [also] had to keep the [didjeridus] wet, just water them up all the time, pour jugs of water through them and leave them outside watered up."

Having the didjeridu "in tune" with the tracks also facilitates placing it in a stereo perspective and shaping its sound in some innovative ways:

"With the rock stuff it is pretty much a matter of putting didj where you want to put it. But it's a rock band and you have to place this other stuff [like didj] into it. The main thing is that as long as it's in tune you could fit it into the audio spectrum pretty easily. It was sometimes placed in the middle of the stereo pan with the kick drums, snare drum and the bass guitar. However, there was one track where we used the proto­type of a Roland sound ­ space devices that I'd worked on in Japan in a R & D capacity. It's one of the new
 generation things where you can generate "phantom images" outside two speakers and hear things at all sorts of points; it's like panning outside the speakers. It's frightening! So we went crazy with that and put it in a few funny spots."

The integrity and ease of recording both the traditional and non­traditional songs came about because of two factors: 1 ) Yothu Yindi maintained a very clear cultural and political focus when making the music, and 2) the musicians were highly competent. Mark Moffit stressed:

"they are the heavyweight traditional musicians up there [Arnhem Land]; they're recognized as the leaders and they play all the ceremonies. I've heard didj's before and it's quite easy for the player to get behind, to drag, and this guy didn't . He was with this drummer who was right there [on the beat] .... those sections just came together magically and that was what set the whole theme for the [recording sessions].

b. YOTHU YINDI

Yothu Yindi offer a paradigmatic example of how some of these challenges are addressed. Their use of the traditional elements of didjeridu and clapsticks, and the lead voice, is essential not only to their pop "sound" but also their cultural ethos and, by extension, their long­standing cultural and political agendas concerning land rights and social justice issues.

For Makuma Yunupingu, Yothu Yindi's didjeridu player, there is a basic difference between using didjeridu in traditional and non­traditional contexts:

"The difference with traditional is you have to keep on playing; you have to play all the way through the music, through every song. The difference with pop is that you can stop at any level, at any time and then play on again. When you're playing for dancers they need the didj to be consistent, along with the bilma. The dancers know when the didj is going to stop. The didj is just like the bilmaóthey're connected to each other."

In live performance he cues primarily off of the vocalist so it is essential that he get a representative mix of sound in his on­stage monitor speakers. For him, having been trained traditionally, "the main one is the lead vocalist. I know all the songs off by heart, so if I listen to the singer then I know when to get in which parts. It's all in my head".

The didjeridu is miked with a small "bug mike" ­ amplification is essential. "It gives you more sound basically. If you don t have that then you can't have everyone hear you that clear". So there may be technological challenges but he does not feel rock presents any excessive demands on his abilities as a didj player, "Nothing's really hard when you know how to play the didj; I've been playing it for a long time so that's no problem".

Makuma Yunupingu performs in the traditional way, seated, and feels that even with the innovations he and others are introducing to modern didjeridu performance there will be not be any irreparable change in the cultural relevance of the instrument:

". . . the didj will always be a tribal instrument; it will never be a technology instrument. The didj will always stay traditional even though you use technology to use it easier in a rock situation; it'll still remain both in my mind and my heart a traditional instrument."

Bassist Stu Kellaway and drummer Hughie Benjamin both agree that while there are restrictions within traditional Aboriginal music, to them exposure to pop music has expanded the ranges of the didjeridu and its players.

They go more outrageous when they are playing this sort of contemporary music. With the traditional music there are set patterns and they have to follow the bilma ­ exactly .

"In a way it's like Latin music where everything queues off the claves]. In the contemporary music the didj players have been encouraged to really let it hang out ­ with the didj playing. They do some fantastic stuff (Benjamin)."

They also stress that both didjeridus and didjeridu players vary immensely from region to region and individually:

There are very different players from all over east Arnhem Land; it ranges from Ramingining to Milingimbi [where] they play quite smaller ones compared to the Yirrkala [Yothu Yindi's home area] boys who have the big bell-shaped ones; and they play it much harsher. In most places they go for that smaller drone like Charlie McMahon's [from the instrumental group Gondwanaland] (Kellaway).

Consequently, the band's unique sound is partly based on the fact that it originates in the Yirrkala homeland areas whose players prefer:

"much more rhythmic stuff than the other guys do. It is much more harsher, these guys. The actual didj is completely different; Yothu Yindi uses some of the biggest [didjs] in Australia. Just physically. And they have that real harsh style of playing; the calls are really strong" (Kellaway).
 

Integrating the didjeridu within a rock rhythm section creates special challenges for bassists and drummers, partly because of the nature of the sound of the didjeridu itself ­ with an expansive sound wave ­ especially the large didjs that Yothu Yindi use. As Benjamin noted, the tonal range of the didjeridu also needs to be considered:

"It's hard sometimes with the didj because it's limited in its keys, so you have to be careful what keys [you use]. You have to write around the didj's key. [The didj player uses two] one's in F# and one's in E and when [they] wrote "Treaty" [they] wrote it around the F# didj so it would all fit in."

Kellaway said the band does not have to limit itself solely to the didjeridu's root key, as well they use "the 4ths and 5ths to the didj's key. B natural, A, etc.". It can present limitations as a bass player but "you just have to lug it out and let the didj fill the space and try and work around it".

Both musicians agree that miking the didjeridu is essential, especially when the "noise floor" at concerts can be very high (exceeding 95db):

"Without the mike it'd be hopeless hearing it; unless you've got a big [sound] system or something with individual [sound] sends. We usually use a bass amp and the didj will play through" the bass amp [with a couple of 15 inch speakers]."

Since the didjeridu, bass and bass drum are all more or less in the same general area of the sound spectrum difficulties can arise. Benjamin recounted:

". . . sometimes you get this big rumble on stage, just a big roar. Which is great when you've got other stuff sitting in top with nice keyboards, guitars and stuff. Then you've got this big bottom end with this more jangly stuff on the top."

Kellaway cautioned:

"[but if you haven't got everything in the right key and you're working together sometimes it can go horribly wrong ­ real fast! Because of competing sound waves! Sometimes we get this huge standing wave on stage between the bass and the didj in the bottom end. [Sometimes] someone has to stop playing; it's just finding the right frequency. When you have a good on­stage sound . . . it's no problem."

Benjamin added, "[but when it goes wrong] it sets up that horrible low­end earthquake-y

sort of thing then nothing's clear. You can't hear any sort ofdistinction".

With regards to technology in general Benjamin feels that :

"Yothu Yindi has really only just begun. The band is just now embracing the technology that is available, only since the last album and subsequent writing. But may be if there is a good marriage it might take an increasing role. It's just a matter of getting all the good elements into it to make something interesting."

Stu Kellaway added, "We want to create that sort of dance sound, but as a big band dance thing, not just an electronic European dance mix".

All in all, for the performers on stage the addition of didjeridu to bass and drums is powerful and, when technologised effectively, ties the lower register of the band's sound together and contributes significantly to Yothu Yindi's sonic uniqueness. As Hughie Benjamin says, "the bottom end of the didj is fantastic, it rattles your ancestors ! !
 

11 TRANSPOSITION

a. CHARLIE McMAHON

Charlie McMahon is a member of the all non­Aboriginal group Gondwanaland, which has recorded several albums of contemporary compositions featuring didjeridu in an ensemble with percussion and synthesisers. He has had a long involvement with Aboriginal culture: living and working with community groups for extended periods. One of his earliest contacts with Aboriginal culture was through the didjeridu and his observations point out that the relative inclusivity and exclusivity of cultures, musical and otherwise, is open to social negotiation ­ as are methods of transposition:

"You see, I started playing at about the age of four because I heard this sound of the didj and I got carried away by it. Music has that quality. I don't have a problem with it but l could see that Europeans would have a problem with it because they, are brought up to think of culture... as this set of icons that doesn't like to change. Simpler cultures, simpler in terms of size not complexity, are open to change. I've heard desert people saying that although they never traditionally played didjeridoo occasionally someone would come down on a big trek or something from some other group and they'd present a didj session at some ceremony."

For McMahon, it was a challenge to use didjeridu in new musical contexts and he acknowledges that a lot of it was trial and error. He was surprised at how what he at first thought of as a technologically simplistic instrument turned out to possess many levels of technical and personal challenges:

"I don't know how different what we (Gondwanaland) do is but it doesn't follow a formula; if it does follow a formula it just follows that here are certain laws to working with didj. It defines all things. For example. you don't go radically jumping around to different keys in a tune when you're using didj. Using the didj means a lot of what you do is going to be pretty modal, but because there aren't many mainline didj players in other bands l find it very hard to get a paradigm or­ a standard to go by."

Beyond technical challenges, there also were challenges as to which non-Aboriginal rhythmic patterns lent themselves to use with didjeridu:

". . . I've found that there're certain rhythms that the didj does favour and there is a certain type of rhythm that is the natural thing for a didj to do. And when you look at a didj working, it's a bit like a heart pumping. It's a bit like a spasm, like a heart, like a heart beat the way a didj works. So you've got an undefined set of parameters."

Trying to keep Gondwanaland's music fresh through the refinement of technique, and technology, is an on­going challenge to McMahon.

"I thought when we did our first record, Terra Incognito, "Well there can be about one record in a didjeridoo". I thought that would be about it. It's so simple, so basic you'd exhaust all the different rhythms, but I've found I've learned different things. About every year and a half I'll come to some new method of handling the instrument, of playing it. And I mostly develop all that through just interaction with my players."

McMahon notes that although he, personally, and his group's music are generally accepted by Aboriginal audiences, before the band's "sound" coalesced it took time to affect a transposition across cultures and musical traditions. Partly because the technological challenges had to be overcome and partly because of more immediate matters:

"I think some Aboriginal people shied away from [the band}, I suppose, because it wasn't rock or country. We've done a lot of shows in Outback places and occasionally we've gotten people that've been distracted, but that was more in the early days; you could probably easily attribute that to our lack of cohesion as a band! Increasingly, I find that when we do tours that are in predominately Aboriginal areas...the people like it a lot."

McMahon is acutely aware of the symbolism when he performs on the didjeridu:

"I mean, the symbolism will be clear: white man , black instrument. And I've often jammed with Aboriginal bands and you'll get the black guy on guitar and here's this white fellow over there playing the didj and they kind of dig that too. They like that (inversion of instrument images): they feel happy about it and everyone says "Yeah, this is good".

Any technologisation and transposition, or the current renaissance of Aboriginal music, traditional or contemporary, has to be contextualised within the grim reality of official policy initiatives towards Aboriginal peoples. Some, such as the "assimilation policy", led to the wholesale removal of Aboriginal children from their families and the active repression of traditional languages and art.

The following observation highlights that non-Aboriginal musicians like Charlie McMahon have been , and are, involved in working with the didjeridu; partly out of genuine interest but also partly because for several generations Aboriginal musicians stood to be actively discouraged, or even punished, for doing the same. As McMahon emphasised:

"To a lot of Aboriginal people there hasn't been a point of making a breakthrough to put Aboriginal identity in the music, because for the last 100 years, up until the 1970's, people were encouraged to do the opposite: told to assimilate, that was the official policy."

b RICHARD WALLEY

Richard Walley is an artist who has worked extensively with didjeridu in rock and roll, "classical" music and dramatic performance. A musician and playwright, he is a proponent of integrating Aboriginal music and drama and his work in both areas points to the efflorescence of Aboriginal culture that is underway.

Technology rarely poses insurmountable problems for his didjeridu performances.

"...It really depends where you are playing and for what audience, or for yourself. You really gauge each performance; each time I play, it's different. If it's a large concert type performance then naturally my didjeridu music sounds not as pure as you would like it to be, but then again (miking) has its plusses on the other side where I can pick up some of the nice little subtle sounds,overtones, etc. Ultimately, of course, acoustically is the best way of playing a didjeridu."

Walley see an unadulterated "natural", sound as preferable for some performances.

" If you are working in conjunction with philharmonic orchestras or people of that sort of ilk, then you'd go for as naturally acoustic (a sound) as possible, and if you do mike it, it's miked as basic as possible and you try and keep it as pure, without any gimmick or without any assistance."

However, when performing in pop contexts he varies his approach.

"The things like reverbs and putting bass and echoes and all that sort of stuff adds to certain tunes. Again, it depends on what sort of audience you are playing for. If you have got a concert where they are sophisticated and it's a sort of a rock group audience, then you go through all the gimmicks and the technology."

Orchestral performances demand skills that are developed through experience, although they do depend at times on good monitoring systems so the didjeridu player can hear him/herself adequately on stage. An essential component, as Walley sees it, is basic to all good musicianship: discipline.

"Once you are working with other musicians, such as an orchestra, you find that it is another way of playing as well, it's another discipline. A lot of didjeridu payers don't have much discipline, unfortunately, and if you lack discipline you've got a lot of problems...you have to be able to say 'if  I've got a monitoring system, I've got to wait, and if  I've got to play my tone the way I'm going to play it. If  I've got problems in the sound systems feedback, that's the feedback problem, not my playing problem' and things like that, sort of little tricks or lessons you pick up along the way (from experience and professionalism), just trial and error."

Like Yothu Yindi's musicians, he also had experienced unique challenges fitting didjeridu sonically into a rock and roll rhythm section.

" Yes, it's very hard If you are a didj player you can put a bass player, of a drummer right off, and vice-versa, because it's rhythms that you're working on in rock and roll bands like Yothu Yindi-they've got it down to a very good match where they play the rhythms.Rhythm didjeridu is probably the most exciting bit of didjeridu to play around and a lot of young people can play it and the chords and play the rhythms."

Aside from over 20 years experience with didjeridu. Walley is unique in that he is a successful playwright; consequently he often uses didjeridu in his plays. In these, he sometimes plays it live and sometimes uses tapes; as well, he varies the didjeridu's use within a play.

" I use a mixture of both. Most of the time, if  I'm there, l play it. The music actually gets into people's systems a lot more readily than words . . . You can prime people with music and say "this is what this production is about. it's an Aboriginal piece". And you can start them off at the front like I did in Munjong, for example. I started them off with a collection of chords and growls and even a little bit of rhythm to tell them this is going to be a story that is mixed, so you can hear the music, and as l'm going off, there's a shout and a scream, that's going to go right through to a scream, and it does set the pace. Then you come to the end of the production, we'll use the didjeridu again to set the rhythm. So by setting the scene at the start and saying "this is what the play is going to be about", that's one thing, and at the end of it you say "this is what the play has said but we're going to build a futureso rather than going for the slow mournful sounds like I did at the start with a lot of chords, I went for rhythms at the end to say to the young people "we have a future" . That's how I used didjeridu in the play to set that tone and put the spirit of the play together."
 

As a self­confessed purist, he sees technology as not essential to many aspects of didjeridu both as an instrument and an aural icon in music and drama. He stresses that didjeridu has a role to play in forming identity because "music, language and culture, they are all one": technology is able to assist but it need not define. For Walley what is important is the immediacy, and spirituality, of the instrument, not an aural illusion of it:

"People have tried technology and they've done all sorts of things, but the raw guts of doing and watching a live performance is far more powerful than anything that can be animated, or put on television, or any screen. Same with the didjeridu People love to see it live, the vibrance of it. which is more powerful than a tape recording."
 

CONCLUSION

Clearly, the technologisation and transposition of didjeridu has contributed to its use in musical and cultural contexts far removed from its home areas in northern Australia. The didjeridu is very much at home across a wide spectrum of musical and artistic genres, from the symphony to the rock rhythm section. The trick, and the artistry, is in making the didjeridu integral and not an overdubósomething added after the fact as filigree to the final recording. In Mark Moffit's recordings of Yothu Yindi's musicians, Charlie McMahon's compositions for Gondwanaland or Richard Walley's concert performances or plays the didjeridu is integral, not a gimmick or "ear candy".

By examining and explicating one specific aural image of "aboriginality" in the soundscapes of Australia's humanscapes this article has aimed to illuminate the manner in which the cultural production and processes of technologisation and transposition of didjeridu are complex and diverse. Although the informants quoted have diverging views, they re-affirm Jones' (1992:1) observation that "without technology, popular music would not exist in its present form". Technology assists all of them, at some level, to disseminate their messages or artistic craft via contemporary music or drama.

The issues raised, however, also transcend matters of technologisation or transposition. On an international level, although the musics and instruments of indigenous peoples, such as the didjeridu, may become incorporated within an all-pervading "universal pop aesthetic" (Frith, 1989), they still resonate most fully and profoundly in the local context. In many ways, all the musics of the world are only so much noise until context informs use, and contributes, ultimately, to identity and ethos.

On a national level, the nature of the social negotiation of icons of aboriginality, aural and otherwise, is not simplistic; but neither is the didjeridu as instrument or icon. Because the didjeridu is part of both their soundscapes, it has become, in Newton's formation at least, one means for Aboriginal and non­Aboriginal Australians to become "authentic" Australians through music (Newton). The didjeridu effectively makes a "space" in the soundscape of the dominant culture and in that sense has the potential to be resistive to its ideology while simultaneously accommodating, adopting and adapting its technology.

This paper concurs, and concludes, with Richard Walley's assessment of didjeridu's persistenceóand, by extension, potential role in on­going resistance as an aural image of aboriginality:

"I'd say didjeridu music has been around for thousands of years and it will still be around for a few more thousand ".

Karl Neuenfeldt