Traditional Irish Didgeridoo

Subject: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: David W
Date: 21 Oct 18 - 08:22 PM

Several English and other European folk bands use didgeridoos, they make no claims to them being anything other than Australian.

Also several Irish bands use them too. I presumed they regarded them Australian too, that was until I spoke to an Irish didgeridoo player a couple of days ago who swore blind the Irish had them thousands of years before the aborigines and this fact was proven by archaeology.

I was wondering if there is an truth in this?

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 21 Oct 18 - 10:12 PM

Wikipedia on didgeridoo

Was the didgeridoo a bit of Irish to the Aborigines? ... The linguistic origins of Australia's most iconic musical instrument, the didgeridoo, have been called into question with an academic claiming the name is of Irish derivation rather than from an Aboriginal dialect ...Flinders University PhD student Dymphna Lonergan suggests the term may have its roots in an old Irish and Scottish expression meaning black trumpeter or horn blower ... She found the first appearance of the word didgeridoo in Australian dictionaries occurred in 1919 in the Australian National Dictionary ... The word is not in any Aboriginal dialect and linguists have long suspected the word is imitative of the sound made by a didgeridoo. But Ms Lonergan said an experiment she conducted asking subjects to make the sound of the instrument yielded words full of vowels starting with the letter "b" or "m". No subjects made the sound didgeridoo. (read on)

Five Ancient Musical Instruments from Ireland ... Two Late Bronze Age Horns from Co. Antrim, 900-600 BC ... probably made a noise similar to a didgeridoo.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Ernest
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 03:02 AM

As if the bodhran wasn`t enough....

And what about the other trad. instrument, the Didgeridon`t?

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Mr Red
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 03:13 AM

In UK Folk Clubs it is inevitably called a digereedon't





I'll get my bodhran ..............

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Ernest
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 03:25 AM

Like to borrow my penknife, Mr. Red?

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST,kenny
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 03:53 AM

"proven by archeology". Did you ask him where ?

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST,kenny
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 03:55 AM

PS - I doubt very much that anyone can come up with an example of the didgeridoo in Irish music before Steve Cooney used one with "Stockton's Wing", probably around the early 1980s.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 04:08 AM

Didgeridoo technique has been tried with Bronze Age horns (e.g. by taking replicas to Australia for Aboriginal didge players to have a go on) and it works. Which doesn't show that anybody played them that way before 2000, and if they did, there obviously weren't any tunes resembling present-day Irish folk for them to accompany. Still, interesting.

I wanna hear somebody reinvent the art of traditional Galloway lithophone.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Ernest
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 04:47 AM

The question is: is it still a tradition if these instruments were not used for about 2000+ years?
Or is it more of a revival?

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST,kenny
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 05:26 AM

" if these instruments were not used for 2000+ years..." Where's the evidence that an "Irish didgeridoo" ever existed?
I do have a CD from Australia called "Reconciliation", which featured a replica of an Irish bronze-age horn, with didgeridoo, clap-sticks, bodhran and whistle. An ambitious and unique project, but that horn got tedious very quickly.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 05:28 AM

Presumably the tradional Irish Didgerdoo is used to accompany traditional Irish songs like "Dirty Old Town", "Green Fields of France", "Streets of London" and "Cwm Rhondda".

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: David W
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 05:29 AM

Kenny
"proven by archeology". Did you ask him where ?

My employment area is in the field of archaeology. So when people in a pub mention archaeology I either run for the exit, change the subject to telephone pole spotting or pretend I'm insurance Adjuster.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: G-Force
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 06:59 AM

I once heard someone introduce Fiddlers' Green as a traditional Irish sea shanty.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Gozz
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 08:11 AM

Don't forget "Clare to here" etc. etc......

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 08:24 AM

You're all leaving out the traditional Irish song, Belfast Mill.

---

Written as "Aragon Mill" by U.S. songwriter Si Kahn. Good song, but not traditional and not Irish.
-Joe Offer, Mudcat Music Editor-

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 08:46 AM

The Irish didn't have a monopoly on ancient horns. Two others are the Maori pukaea, made of wood, and the Danish lur, curved into a J shape.

A pair of lurs is depicted on the wrapper of Lurpak butter. Kerrygold and Anchor don't have matching pictures, but quite likely all three (the UK brand leaders) will vanish from the shelves after Brexit - NZ recently signed a trade agreement with the EU rather than bother with any special deal with the UK.

I'm working on a trio for Irish horn, lur and pukaea to be titled "The Dry Crumpets of England".

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 09:37 AM

Thanks Jack.

I can now hear Steeleye Span

"And oh the dry toast of old England
In old England very dry toast"

And will have a very perverse earworm for the rest of the day.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 10:21 AM

What was that big long battle horn the ancient Scots used to scare the Romans shitless...???

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 10:45 AM

The carnyx. Possibly too rare, valuable and loaded with religious associations to have been used for real as a war instrument.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Senoufou
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 11:14 AM

'The Dry Crumpets of England! Gaaaaaaaaaaagh Jack! The very idea!!!!!

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Tradsinger
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 06:02 PM

I think the notion of an Irish digiridoo is about as Irish as a Bazouki or a Bohran (Wessex Riddle Drum).

Tradsinger

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Effsee
Date: 22 Oct 18 - 09:48 PM

I blame Dougie McLean!   :-)

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Amergin
Date: 23 Oct 18 - 01:30 AM

The mere idea that the oldest culture in the world could not come up with their own wind instrument with out white help is a bit insulting.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Oct 18 - 02:54 AM

Nobody's saying the Aborigines didn't invent the didge.

As a rhythmic drone, it works very well for many kinds of music. Other instruments that do the same thing, despite working on totally different principles, are the utogardon, washtub bass, jug, gypsy "rolling" vocals and tambourin de Béarn. I don't see any problem with using a new instrument for a musical function that's already part of a tradition.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 23 Oct 18 - 03:58 AM

The age of the didgeridoo is still uncertain though, there seems to be evidence that Aboriginal people have been using only fairly recently, possibly no longer than 1000 years. Not that this really argues for outside influences.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 23 Oct 18 - 04:01 AM

they are just saying the name does not seem to come from any Aboriginal language.

quote from my original post (Wikipedia on Didgeridoo) ... the first appearance of the word didgeridoo in Australian dictionaries occurred in 1919 in the Australian National Dictionary ... The word is not in any Aboriginal dialect and linguists have long suspected the word is imitative of the sound made by a didgeridoo. But Ms Lonergan said an experiment she conducted asking subjects to make the sound of the instrument yielded words full of vowels starting with the letter "b" or "m". No subjects made the sound didgeridoo.

another extract form Wikipedia on Didgeridoo - Yi?aki (sometimes spelt yirdaki) is one of the most commonly used names, although – strictly speaking – it refers to a specific type of instrument made and used by the Yolngu people of north-east Arnhem Land.

What is the real name for the didgeridoo? There are many different Aboriginal names for the instrument, primarily because there are so many different language groups amongst the Aboriginal people.
In T.B. Wilson's Narrative of a Voyage Round the World (1835), there is a drawing of an Aboriginal man from Raffles Bay, Coburg Peninsula, playing the instrument. Observations made at Raffles Bay, describe the instrument as being about 3 feet long and made of bamboo. Names obtained were eboro, ebero and ebroo.
According to Prof Trevor Jones, (Monash University) there are at least 45 different synonyms for the didgeridoo. Some are bambu, bombo, kambu, pampuu, (may reflect didgeridoo origins from bamboo), garnbak, illpirra, martba, Jiragi, Yiraki, Yidaki, (seem close dialectically and which means "bamoo" although no longer commonly made from bamboo). (read on for 2 tables of names in various Northern Territory languages)

Where did didgeridoo come from? The Didgeridoo is a wooden BRASS instrument thought to have originated in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. 2. Researchers have suggested it may be the world's oldest musical instrument, over 40,000 years old (read on for 13 facts about the didgeridoo)

About the only thing I knew was the instrument was played in northern Australia & that it's local name began with "Y" - now I see that name was only one of it's local names.

sandra

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 23 Oct 18 - 06:41 AM

Who are these researchers who suggest that the didgeridoo may be 40,000 years old? My reading is that there is no evidence in rock art which is older than 1000 or at the most 1500 years, the oldest being at Ginga Wardelirrhmeng.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 23 Oct 18 - 09:27 AM

David, the article does not say & I have no idea, perhaps you can ask the authors via their
contact form

sandra

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Mr Red
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 03:28 AM

Like to borrow my penknife, Mr. Red?

Nah! Us expert 'Hranista tune ours with a Swish Army Knife.







Because it has the alien key attachment. And we tune 'cos we care...........

And talking of tuning: I did see a Ozzie didgereedogooder on TV who played an extendable one - bit like a trombone. Made from two drain pipes. And he only had one arm! Or maybe 1.5 arms.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Jack Campin
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 03:48 AM

Tunable didges like that were common 20 years ago. Problem is, being parallel bore, they don't have the weird and wonderful anharmonic overtones you get with a made-by-termites model.

I once found a didgeridoo-sized length of Pyrex laboratory tubing in a skip and gave it to a local didgist. She was going to improve it by softening it over a flame to introduce small random kinks and wiggles.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Paul Burke
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 04:30 AM

As a musician I know put it, why is it, whenever a didgeridoo player walks in, the words "arse" and "shove" come to mind?

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 05:04 AM

If there is anything in this world that the Irish don't claim to have invented I'll be amazed.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 05:22 AM

Aragon Mill was beautifully done by Andy Irvine on one of Patrick Street's albums.

At least 20 years ago we had a bloke with a didgeridoo at our somewhat anarchic "sessions" at the Wellington in Boscastle. He was quite well-behaved, diffident even, and provided a pretty fair, very low drone for tunes in D. There's a busker in the underpass in Truro who intersperses his didgeridoo playing with a sort of growling vocal, not quite in the style of "Lost John" by Sonny Terry. He has a vicious-looking dog and has been known to snarl sarcastically if you don't give him a bob or two. Not exactly charm incorporated...

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Jack Campin
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 05:27 AM

Here is another take on the didgeridoo, in Western-derived art music. I know one of Peter Sculthorpe's pieces like this, Earth Cry - William Barton takes it to places you'd never imagine from what European folkies do with it.

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/ancient-instruments-new-tunes-20031006-gdhj5w.html

http://musictrust.com.au/the-art-of-the-didgeridoo/

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 07:42 AM

William Barton played at my daughter's graduation from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. We both thought it was quite inappropriate.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 08:09 AM

The Levellers used to have a sometime digeridoo player

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mVvMopn2os

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 01:20 PM

"If there is anything in this world that the Irish don't claim to have invented I'll be amazed."
I thought that that was the Scots
As has been pointed out, the bouzouki and the bodhran are fairly recent introductions to Irish instrumental music - the former has its origins in ritual rather than dancing
In Clare, many of the older musicians thought the playing of the former to be unlucky due to its ritual nature (or that's what they told us!!)
Perhaps the declared intention of many of them to take a knife to is has its roots in ritual sacrifice!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Effsee
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 02:55 PM

Do you mean latter Jim?

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Thompson
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 05:25 PM

Sounds pretty bats; presumably the long horns were used in virtually all early societies.
The bodhrán was originally an implement called in English a dildurn, used for winnowing grain; again, it seems logical to imagine that it would have been used as a tabor by many widely separated groups. (The Irish word comes from bodhar - deaf.)

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: David W
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 11:28 PM

The Bodhran is proven to be 8000 years old.

The problem with Irish nonsense about the Bodhran is the pretence it's somehow an Irish instrument different from all the identical drums used worldwide.

as for its recent renaissance in Ireland and stick playing style, this seems to have originated in entirely in England as an identically played English drum called the Riddle Drum predates it by decades.

A comprehensive well researched history can be found here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_UG49MOWS8

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 25 Oct 18 - 04:04 AM

Interesting, I had always thought that the bouzouki was Greek, but it seems that it was introduced to modern Greece by immigrants from Turkey. But maybe it is Greek, as it seems to be derived from ancient Greek instruments which presumably were used in the Greek colonies in Anatolia in antiquity. It also seems to be related to Byzantine instruments, the Byzantine empire of course encompassing large parts of both modern Greece and modern Turkey.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Oct 18 - 04:40 AM

"The Bodhran is proven to be 8000 years old."
Where ?

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Oct 18 - 05:38 AM

"The Bodhran is proven to be 8000 years old."
Where ?

Erm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in the link provided.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 25 Oct 18 - 06:26 AM

The claim that the bodrhan is 8000 years old seems to be based upon one or more paintings on walls in Çatalhöyük which appear to show someone carrying or using a frame drum.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Oct 18 - 07:01 AM

And which of the 32 counties is "Catalhoyuk" in ?

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Oct 18 - 07:01 AM

All the old images of frame drums I know of show them being played fingerstyle, as it still is by cultures that never forgot it. The most spectacular is the Pompeii mosaic which shows the drummer bashing it from underneath, as is still done by Iranian and Kurdish daf players - the drum is kept floating in the air by a fusillade of finger impacts.

The bouzouki is a Greek hybrid of the Turkish baglama and the Greek lavta (which dates back to when Greece was a province of the Ottoman Empire). The word is Turkish, but an odd "false friend" - the Turkish word was "bozuk", which means "broken", but the actual root was Persian "bozorg", which means "large" - it was the largest size of its family.

The bark trumpet, like the present-day didgeridoo-sized Romanian "bucinium", probably predated the Western European bronze horns, but identifying the remains of one in an Irish bog isn't all that likely.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 25 Oct 18 - 08:15 AM

I am astonished that anybody with any interest in history does not know where Catalhoyuk is. It is in modern day Turkey. But it is one of the earliest cities known, and the largest city excavated from the period 7500 - 5700 BCE.

Bhodran is just a word. Frame drums are called many different things in many different cultures and many different languages. As are wheels, but there is no suggestion that the English invented the wheel because it is called by an English word in England.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Oct 18 - 09:41 AM

The point is, it isn't in Ireland.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: Paul Burke
Date: 25 Oct 18 - 04:57 PM

Bhodran is just a word.

so's bodhran. And bohdran, which is how it was spelt on an immaculate narrowboat in green and cream with exquisite Celtic knots that I saw a few years ago.

Subject: RE: Traditional Irish Didgeridoo
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 25 Oct 18 - 09:56 PM

Bodhran's just another word for nothing else to use?