Should a woman ever play a man's instrument? When Nicole Kidman blew into what the innocent and uncaring call a didgeridoo, some, under the impression that the use of the instrument was confined to males, were astonished at her temerity, while others became furious that anyone should think that there was any instrument that a woman might not play if she chose. Kidman and her co-star Hugh Jackman were in Germany to promote Australia the movie. Thomas Gottschalk, host of the country's hit game show Wetten, Dass ... ? had apparently decided to make a joke of all things Aboriginal. Jackman was challenged to stand on one leg as Aborigines do, which Gottschalk found hilarious. Kidman stood expressionless until Gottschalk thrust the didgeridoo he was brandishing up against her lip-gloss. For a second, I hoped she'd belt him round the ear with it, and for another that she would hike up her skirt, sit on the floor, prop the didge on her big toe and give it her best. Instead, she remained standing, took it in one hand and blew a parp. A didgeridoo is at least as hard to play as a valveless trumpet, but anyone can make it fart. More brutal glee from the host. No doubt about it, Aboriginal culture was hilarious. Kidman blew a second parp, and that was it.
Most people think that didgeridoo is an Aboriginal word. There is no such language as Aboriginal and no such word in any surviving Aboriginal language. The same is true of the words kangaroo and koala. The languages that these words are derived from may have perished, which is all too possible, or whitefellas may have invented them. One researcher thinks that didgeridoo may be an Irish coinage, a nonce word like boogaloo or dingaling. Certainly, some of the worse-tempered bloggers on the subject suggested that Kidman would be best advised to get herself home to Tennessee and blow a few riffs on her husband's didgeridoo.
A more correct name for the instrument made out of a branch of an ironwood or bloodwood tree (of which the heartwood has been eaten out by termites) is yidaki. The ideal branch narrows towards one end, which will form the mouthpiece, and spreads gradually towards the other, to form the bell. Different shapes, bores and dimensions provide different pitches and resonances. The branch is first smoothed down and dressed with ochre, then decorated by a kinswoman of the designated player, if possible his mother, with simple and subtle designs signifying his identity and clan relationships. It is inappropriate for anyone to presume to play anyone else's yidaki. What Kidman was asked to play was the kind of gaudily decorated fake yidaki sold by the thousands in Australian tourist shops and played by buskers in just about every German shopping mall.
In September this year, the inclusion of a chapter on How to Play a Didgeridoo, in the new Australian edition of The Daring Book for Girls, called forth a rebuke from Dr Mark Rose, who, on the strength of his "traditional link" to the Gunditjmara people of Western Victoria, has built himself a promising career as an Aboriginal spokesperson, culminating in his appointment as head of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association. No sooner had Kidman handed her yidaki back to Gottschalk than the media, thus forewarned, were beating the bushes for an Aboriginal person to badmouth her. They came up with award-winning actor and playwright, and teacher of the Dharug language, Richard Green, who was only too happy to make himself conspicuous by announcing that by "playing" a yidaki Kidman had rendered herself infertile. He was joined by Allen Madden, cultural and educational officer at Sydney's Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council.
Neither of these commentators belongs to a group for whom the yidaki has any ceremonial significance whatsoever. At the top end of the Northern Territory, where the yidaki is an essential element in ceremonies, women have been known to master the yidaki. Jemima Wimalu, a Mara woman from Roper river, was recorded playing a yidaki at Borroloola in 1966. A woman past reproductive age could presumably play the yidaki without ill effect. What must be clear is that the yidaki is difficult to play well. Anyone can drone away, but building and maintaining the crossover rhythms requires real skill. The player also has to master the art of circular breathing so that the ribbons of sound are continuous, which is fiendishly difficult and requires both muscular strength and stamina. No European woodwind player has ever even tried to play without pauses for breath. Masters of the yidaki can play for hours. Few Aboriginal women became masters of the yidaki because, given their onerous duties as chief providers of sustenance, few had the time.
Those Aboriginal men who uttered dark threats to Kidman's fertility were themselves newcomers to the yidaki, which is now a fixture in all Aboriginal pop music. Their shock is mostly to be explained by the universal male distaste for the idea of a woman with a horn. Lists of famous trumpeters, trombonists, saxophonists and French horn players rarely name any women at all, though women have played all these instruments to professional standard. Generally speaking, the musicians they played with had no trouble accepting or respecting them, except for the Vienna Philharmonic, which is still reluctant to accept female musicians as full members of the orchestra, no matter what they play.
