Take a Musical Trip Blog Post: Australian Aboriginal Music

 

The Indigenous people of Australia and Torres Strait Islands, often referred to as Aboriginals, have their own distinct music that is very unique in its sound. For Indigenous Australians, music plays a vital role in both their cultural and social lives, often being crucial to many ceremonies and activities. While music is connected to almost every aspect of Aboriginal Australians' lives, it is found most important and sacred in wedding, birth, and funeral ceremonies.

While this music has been played for thousands of years by Australian Aboriginals, being passed down from generation to generation, European colonization and the forced repression of Indigenous people’s culture caused a large amount of musical knowledge to be lost. Because of this, many Indigenous communities are trying to rebuild and relearn the culture that has been lost to them. In order to try and protect themselves, many Indigenous communities have decided not to share their customs with Western Society. This means that we don’t know all the details about the musical traditions of these people.

In Aboriginal Australian music, there are a variety of different instruments used, but the most common are the didgeridoo, clapsticks, and the bullroarer. 

The most famous of these three is the didgeridoo, which is fairly well known is Western Culture. The didgeridoo is made out of eucalyptus tree trunks that have been hollowed out by termites. To play it, one simply blows into the instrument while buzzing their lips. Something very unique about this instrument is that while playing it, the musician employs circular breathing, a practice where the player breathes in through their nose and out through their mouth at the same time. 

Clapsticks are another instrument that are widely used in Australian Aboriginal music. They are percussion instruments that are made in pairs out of wood. To play this instrument you hit them on the ground or beat them against the side of the didgeridoo while it is being played. Clapsticks are very important for keeping the rhythm in Australian Aboriginal music and can be found in many of their songs.

This video shows an unknown man playing the bullroarer in 2016.

Lastly, the bullroarer is an instrument that consists of a wooden disc that is connected to a rope. By swinging the disk around in the air, the vibrations cause a loud hum, which you can change the volume of by either swinging the disk faster or slower. The ability to change the dynamics of this instrument really give the person playing it a lot of musical freedom.

The video above, released on August 4, 2017,  shows Lewis Burns, an Aboriginal Australian artist, playing traditional didgeridoo rhythms. In this song you can hear him using circular breathing which makes it so he doesn’t ever stop producing sound. In general, Australian Aboriginal music has a uniform rhythm throughout the entire song. However, musicians do sometimes make use of double-time and half-time to change the speed of the music. In this piece we can hear that Lewis uses the didgeridoo to keep the rhythm, which stays the same throughout the whole piece. Similarly, like most Aboritional music, the dynamics in this piece are consistent throughout the song.

This demonstration, also by Lewis Burns, which was released in 2020, shows Lewis playing the didgeridoo and a lapstick at the same time. 

This music sounds very different from most mainstream Western music and that is for several different reasons. First of all, there is no harmony in traditional Aboriginal music as all the melodic parts are completed by a single person. In this type of music the didgeridoo and clapsticks are responsible for keeping the rhythm. If there is singing, the melody is usually simple and repeats itself over and over. Another important part to mention is that throughout the songs, the dynamics of the piece are consistent and do not change. These aspects all compile together to give traditional Australian Aboriginal music its unique sound. While this unique sound isn’t something that I’m used to listening to, I find it extremely interesting and really enjoyed listening to this foreign type of music while researching it.

Citations

“Aboriginal Music.” Kaitlin Bove Music, kaitlinbove.com/aboriginal-music.Accessed 27 Oct. 2024.

“Indigenous Music of Australia.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Oct. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_music_of_Australia.

“Introduction to Traditional Aboriginal Music.” Aboriginal Art & Culture Alice Springs Australia, www.aboriginalart.com.au/didgeridoo/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2024.