Greg Stepanich

Drone home: Disc spotlights didgeridoo

Folk instruments are interesting at least in part because they bring us back to our earliest societies, when the drums and other noisemakers often meant something more than just entertainment.

The didgeridoo is the wind instrument of Australia’s Aborigines, and Florida Atlantic University has an expert on its staff in the person of James E. Cunningham. His disc of didgeridoo music — Didgeridoo Diversions — is one of the four FAU released late last year on its Hoot/Wisdom label.

Let me say right off that I’m not really a fan of the sound of the didgeridoo; call me too urban and too used to the variety of more sophisticated instruments, but for me the didgeridoo is more or less a bagpipe drone and makes more sense for carrying messages across the Outback than as a concert instrument.

But Cunnigham has cannily married the didgeridoo to other instruments for this disc, and so we have a four-movement sonata for saxophone and didgeridoo composed by Cunningham and saxophonist Glen Gillis, who plays alto and soprano to Cunningham’s red cedar didgeridoo. Gillis is a good player, and his clean, powerful sound contrasts well with the didgeridoo.

The work’s two outer movements (Expose and Ritornello) feature much of the same material, in which roulades and motifs in the saxophone come to rest on or around the same central note being played by the didgeridoo. The colors of the sax lines influence the overtones you hear from the didgeridoo, which lends the music something more of a standard minor-major key feel.

Overtones are an essential part of Oscillations, a Cunnigham piece for double bass and didgeridoo (this one made of bamboo). For the first few minutes, it’s difficult to tell which instrument is which; it’s a low, throbbing sound pregnant with tonal possibilities. It’s intriguing, and later you can hear the bass sliding up and down the strings over the steady pulse of the didgeridoo, then stopping with a big pizzicato snap.

Another interesting track is Dying Salmon, in which the didgeridoo emotes against a recording of water and birds; the didgeridoo tries repeatedly to rise up about a half-step before sinking back, again and again before abruptly cutting off. It’s an effective piece of tone painting, and like most of the selections here, somewhat hypnotic.

The disc also features a goofy bit of Tuvan-style throat singing, which is roughly the vocal equivalent of the didgeridoo’s drone of wood. The Hamburger Song consists of the words “hamburger, cheeseburger, Big Mac, Whopper,” throat-sung repeatedly (probably by Cunningham, but the disc doesn’t say) before a punch line that ends it.
Like some of the other music on this disc, this could be effective as a sample for a house mashup or something like that.

The limitations of the didgeridoo, despite the clever way it is packaged on Didgeridoo Diversions (it can be downloaded here), make it more effective in a supporting role than a star turn. But the disc does demonstrate that interesting things are going on at FAU’s music department, even if the record is likely to draw only niche interest.

The disc provides a rich library for good sound samples, at least, and it’s an interesting experience in ethnomusicology. As with the three other classical discs it released at the same time, FAU deserves credit for bringing this music and these performers to a wider audience.

(For a different, much harsher view of these records, here are some short takes on these discs from FAU's student University Press Online.)