KISSmyBLAKarts: More than a tune

We should not speak for other people’s country when debating whether a woman has the right to play the didgeridoo, writes Sam Cook.

NATIONAL: SAM COOK* explores the use of the didgeridoo by women, and confronts the worrying trend to speak for another person’s country.

It started with a loud proclamation via Facebook, declaring that women are allowed to play the didgeridoo. Almost immediately it became the viral news many European women, who play it anyway, wanted to hear. Posts started streaming in from all over Australia and beyond in triumphant virtual rapture from non-Indigenous people globally: “I like this, my wife does too”.

The announcement that women could play didgeridoo was given within the context of an endorsement from a Yidaki master. According to him, it was okay for women who aren’t traditional to play the didgeridoo. In the age of social networks, the audience, the reposts and the counter position in real time, made for quite the online spectacle.

I clicked the links to the person that were accompanying the decree, and found one particular Indigenous male from one specific tribal nation had been quoted.

Beyond this, females within his family are noted on the site in their role of Yidaki production. Interestingly, the site is an enterprise for a vendor offering a $2,500 per person five day cultural immersion with Yidaki masterclasses, to which the master is the brand.

Second to this, they felt legitimised by non-Indigenous ethnomusicologist Linda Barwick.

In her book The Didgeridoo, From Arnhem Land to Internet (Perfect Beat Publications), Barwick proposes that although women have not traditionally played the didgeridoo ceremonially, informally there is “no prohibition” in “the Dreaming Law”.

Barwick goes on to suggest that the myth of the taboo is a southern Indigenous construct, adopted recently in areas to which the didgeridoo is not traditionally found. Barwick is lauded by some for putting the ‘facts’ right and flinging the door wide open for all and sundry to adopt, adapt and appropriate. But we have seen that anyone can propagate any position they so desire, including the framing of multi-gender use of didgeridoo as sanctioned by “Law” from the “Dreamtime”.

We are, after all, talking about ‘Dreamtime’, an English term coined about 1896 by Frank J. Gillen, a Justice of the Peace, of the Alice Springs telegraph station and the ‘didgeridoo’ touted to be named by Australian explorer
Herbert Basedow in the 1920’s. Within these constructs imposed upon and widely defining Indigenous cultural authority, clearly anything is possible.

What becomes of this? An influx bigger than the predicted uptake of the instrument labelled ‘taboo’ to women and the green-light of another round of cultural misappropriation? Or a world left confused by conflicting messages?

Or is it the cultural crossroads where tradition and popular culture collide? The topic of women playing the didgeridoo is not a clear cut case of black and white. From my Indigenous world view, which originates from the north-west of Australia, we were told from a very early age that as females, we weren’t to touch the didgeridoo without permission to do so.

I say this because I know an Indigenous female who was given permission to do so and I can say that yes, in some instances women do play. But just because she has permission doesn’t make it a free for all. We are an oral culture and personally I give far more credence to my Elders than a book. And why wouldn’t I? A book can go out of print in a matter of years, its relevance often outmoded by the time it lands on the shelves. It can hardly compare to a cultural continuum of oral history since time immemorial.

I too will tell my daughter and nieces that females aren’t to touch the didgeridoo without permission to do so, in the hope they too impart this knowledge.
Whilst the term didgeridoo is a European construct, I’ve been using it deliberately within this piece to circumvent a push within the new age market place to limit the scope and focus of the didgeridoo to one particular tribe and one particular area.

The truth however is that this instrument can be traced tribally as far south-west as Roebourne Western Australia, across to Central Australia and Far North Queensland. In this, its known by so many more names; Ngarrriralkpwina, Yiraka, Babmu, Martba, Paampu, Ilpirra, amongst others, each with its own Lore, ritual and belief system that is reflective of a living culture and comes within its own determination.

It also comes within its own cultural authority related to these areas, and while one master from one tribe in his country proclaims it’s okay for women to play the Yidaki, he does not speak for any other tribe or custodian in any other area but his own.

Whether or not he is out of turn in proclaiming this, is the business for his community to determine.

Equally, if he so chooses to create his brand around this and charge $2,500 per person, and his people are happy for this, then so be it. I don’t and I won’t speak for his tribe, it’s entirely their call. What I will challenge is this enduring myth that people in the South East and South West of Australia have no right to enforce their cultural authority in their country, should they not wish for women to play the didgeridoo.

Like the master in his country, they too have the right to speak in their tribal area. To not respect their decision or supersede it with another’s Lore from the north is disrespectful. Also to suggest their men are not real or Indigenous enough to play this instrument is a broad and offensive generalisation. Who could know every didgeridoo player’s backstory or lineage?

I know of some Noongar artists in the south-west of Western Australia who underwent the same permissions process as the sister in the North and have, under the sanction of that arrangement, every right to perform and become as masterful as a traditional artist.

Inter-tribal cultural trade is a part of trade routes that extend as far back as the oral histories themselves and are often validated by the latest archaeological find, so its conceivable that the didgeridoo was traded.

In today’s context, it remains a tradable item and a sellable commodity. I’ve heard it said, ‘If they’re so sacred, stop selling them’, but who said profit can’t be derived from our cultural continuum in the present day, in the same way a painting is sold and revered?

At least the economic benefit goes to the source instead of towards an overseas version made without the cultural knowledge of process and context.

But where does this leave us?

The didgeridoo has become aligned to an Australian identity and musically falls within the woodwind family. Artists will view it not on cultural terms but on its ability to deliver them to their musical destinations, European women will view it as their feminist right to play, while new agers will default to masters like the one above. But for Indigenous people, it will be viewed as one of the last objects in which our collective voice on the matter is yet again ignored.

* Sam Cook is a monthly arts columnists for Tracker and is currently Program Director of The Dreaming.