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DIDGERIDOO

..Aboriginal Art

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Buy your Aboriginal Artifacts here, Didgeridoos, cds, Prints, etc.

Australia has an enormous diversity of styles of Aboriginal art.   Each of the dynamic traditions, though varying in form from region to region, is united by common religious themes expressing the relationship between people, their land, and the ancestral beings. Aboriginal art is one way that people mediate with the ever-present Dreaming ancestors; it is one of the great religious arts of the world.

Aboriginal people have probably lived across Australia for up to 100,000 years. Small groups of people, very often just the immediate family, wives and children, moved over their lands with the seasons and available food supply, supporting themselves by fishing, hunting and food gathering.  They evolved a technology and way of life which remained in perfect harmony with their environment. 

Aboriginal artists utilised natural earth pigments in all their work - red iron ochre, yellow ochre, charcoal and kaolin or white pipe clay.   Bark paintings are a very old Aboriginal art form.  Once practised on the inside surface of bark shelters, they are now found throughout Arnhem land.  The same designs which appear on bark are also painted on many  didgeridoos.

The richest and most varied collections of Aboriginal art are painted in cave galleries and carved on rock outcrops at numerous sites throughout Australia. The galleries of are such antiquity, so beautiful, and of such magnificent variety that it has been suggested by many archaeologists that Australia may house the largest and most important collection of Palaeolithic art in the world.

Australian aboriginal traditional arts are unique. The Pitjantjatjara and Yankuntjatjara people mainly carve wood and make superbly crafted weapons, particularly spears, woomeras, shields and boomerangs.  Two local woods are used - mulga, a type of wattle, and the roots of the river red gum.  Desert artists reveal an uncannily accurate observation of nature in their carved snakes, lizards, perentie, wild cats and small marsupials. 

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MORE ON DIDGERIDOOS

.By John Bowden..

. In recent years there has been a tremendous upsurge of interest in the didgeridoo.  Especially since 1988, the bi-centennial year of the first permanent settlement of Europeans in Australia, there has been an ever increasing awareness of things Australian, not only by people from overseas, but from Australians themselves.   And this is well overdue.

The sound of the didgeridoo is somehow quintessential to the very soul of Australia's natural landscape.  No other sound can evoke memories and images of the Australian outback better than the haunting tones of the didgeridoo. And what Australian does not like to think that he or she has no affinity with the bush?

The didgeridoo is to Australia what the bagpipes are to Scotland, what the steel guitar and ukulele are to Hawaii, what the sitar is to India, the Flamenco guitar is to Spain, and the mandolin to Italy.  Unlike the instruments of these other countries, however, the didgeridoo had its origin and development entirely within the country with which it is now associated.

The Book "Didgeridoo" provides a complete guide to the playing of this ancient instrument.  Also included is background information so that the reader and prospective didgeridooist can appreciate the importance of the didgeridoo to  Aborigines for whom it was, and still is, part of social and ceremonial life, and who have bequeathed the joy of hearing and playing this fascinating wind instrument to other Aborigines, and other fellow Australians; and to the rest of the world.

A great deal of pleasure can be had in playing the didgeridoo.  Indeed it can be great fun just trying.  Once you are only a little proficient at it,  you can have fun with others, say at a party, if you bring out your didge, and several pieces of 40mm P.V.C. pipe. (to which you have moulded beeswax mouth-pieces) for them to have a try.

When you have mastered circular breathing, you have a great opportunity to practice very effective relaxation techniques.    This is because of the deep and controlled breathing involved, and your concentration on the sounds you are creating.

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