One

There is
no breath
no body
no substance
no emptiness
no experience
no experiencer
there is
only

One

Shoonya

Emptiness........

Silence.........

timeless.......

boundless........

that connects all

that is the basis of all

field of all play

all creation arising in it

merging into it

where all is ever moving

being born

transforming

dissolving

all is perfect

imperfection is but a perception

Didgeridoo-The Song of the Jungle, Newsvision.in, 2010

 

Didgeridoo-The Song of the Jungle By Ritu Jain Search for self and yearning for the sublime is as old as human existence. To connect with the universality of existence, people have pursued their passions or callings, walking through personal, cultural and traditional boundaries through the practice of their crafts and relentless study. And as old as human existence is the yearning for music, a rhythm, a sublime note, that unifies the soul with nature and thereby, with the divine. The ancient man found ways to create music from whatever nature offered. The aboriginal people of Northern Australia have been playing one such instrument, the didgeridoo, which could easily be credited to being the oldest instrument played by man. While no reliable data provides the exact age of the didgeridoo, archeological studies have dated the rock art of the Kakadu region of the Northern territory of Australia to date back 1,500 years. Another clear rock painting in Ginga Wardelirrhmeng, located on the northern edge of the Arnhem Land plateau is said to show a didgeridoo player and two singers participating in an Ubarr Ceremony. Further research revealed that no such rock painting existed. For an instrument that appears rather simplistic, almost crude in its design, the myths surrounding it are several. And while most of us may not even have heard about it, thousands of didgeridoos are made in Australia for sale. The didgeridoo is a wind instrument, not a flute, more a ‘drone pipe’ or an aerophone. It is usually made from the stem of a Eucalyptus tree that has been naturally hollowed out by termites. The traditional method followed by the Aborigines of spotting such trees entails walking for miles through the bush until they are able to identify hollowed out trees by the smell of the termites or the shape of the tree or its leaves. They than selectively chop a few trees without ravaging the jungle unlike some modern hack-saw happy sorts. Interestingly, only the stems of live, young Eucalyptuses whose hard core is hollowed out by termites make for good didgeridoos and not old dead trees. The hard wood of the Eucalyptus gives good resonance and timbre to the sound of a didgeridoo. The bark of the hollow tree is removed and the interior is cleaned of dirt and termites, the outside is sanded, holes are sealed and the mouth end is covered with beeswax for protections. Playing technique involves continuously vibrating lips to produce the drone while using a special method of breathing called circular breathing (breathing in through the nose while simultaneously expelling stored air out of the mouth using the tongue and cheeks). A trained player is able to sustain a note for as long as half an hour. It is traditionally played as an accompaniment to ceremonial dancing and singing and for surviving cultural ceremonies. One such didgeridoo master, William Barton, performed in Delhi last month at the Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts. As he settled down on the open stage, under the huge ‘peepal’ tree, the audience gathered hadn’t a clue as to what to expect. Until he started playing – the mystical sounds of a dense forest, leaves rustling in a gentle breeze under a starlit sky, birds tweeting, sounds of animals like a kangaroo or other assorted types hopping about the jungle. The pleasant weather and the open-air stage made the audience participants in an intriguing journey as he playfully pulled them in by ‘teaching’ them sounds of various jungle birds and had them all rumbling, clapping and whistling to his signals along with the intriguing deep drone. Barton is from Australia and is of Aboriginal descent. He was taught to play the instrument early by his uncle who is an elder of the Wannyi, Kalkadunga and Lardil tribes of Western Queensland. By age 12 he was playing for Aboriginal dance troupes and by age 15 he had toured America. He has since played with various Symphony Orchestras including the London Philharmonic. The music album, ‘Songs Of Sea and Sky’ by Peter Sculthorpe, released in May 2004 by ABC Classics was revised for didgeridoo and orchestra. His accomplishments have been several and he is acclaimed as one of the finest didgeridoo players in Australia. He is frequently invited to distant lands to perform. The reason he gives makes perfect sense - "I want to show people, no matter what your background is, music is a universal language, and it can relate to different people in different ways." So what does William Barton really love about the didgeridoo? He was quoted to have said, ‘What I really enjoyed was the story telling properties of the instrument and how the person could tell the story through the sound and the elements of the Australian landscape. The resonance of the instrument, especially when you’re out in the bush, it sort of cascades around because it echoes off the trees as well.” So does he teach others to play too? Barton points out that in his tribal language there is no word for ‘teach’. The equivalent terminology is ‘guntha’, which means ‘inner spirit’. The magic of learning truly lies in ‘Guntha’

Sensitive Design, 'I' NewsLetter, India Habitat Center 2009

Harmony within harmony without, Femina Book of Interiors, Dec 2006