Works in progress
Portraits from and Portals to the Didjeridu Dispersion
Preparing a book manuscript for publication.
Abstract text:
There are many versions (Indian, Jainist, Buddhist, etc) of the classic story of a number of blind men (usually between three and six) insisting that their view of the elephant is the true and correct view. The didjeridu dispersion is a similar phenomenon because, like the blind men and the elephant, we cannot see it in its entirety. We can imagine that it is out there, and we can certainly gather evidence for its existence and glimpse various aspects of it. The intention of this book is to present the stories of a variety of players in the didjeridu dispersion. Individual players have been selected on the basis of their influence as actors in the globalization of the didjeridu, or their representative roles in trends of its transmission and transformation. The presentation of their stories has a twofold intent: first, to create a portrait of the player in a fairly unmediated way by using their words as much as possible while editing for clarity and succinctness; and secondly, to create a portal into the didjeridu dispersion through the “point of view”, world view, or the frame of the player in order to present their view of “the elephant.” These case studies present a view of the player (portrait) as well as the view of (the didjeridu dispersion from the point of view of) the player (portal).
Instrumental Migration: A comparison of the didjeridu, jembe, and gamelan dispersions
Scholarly article.
Abstract text:
There are multitude cases of musical dispersion: Javanese and Balinese gamelan, South and North Indian music, Balkan music and dance, Celtic music, klezmer, Taiko drumming, Ghanaian drumming and dance, Tuvan throat singing, steelpan, Native American flute, jembe, congas, shakuhachi, to name some. The intention of this article is to focus on the parallel dispersions of didjeridu, jembe and gamelan in order to contextualize their similarities and difference within a broader framework. Instrumental dispersions can be object- or system-centric, though generally a combination of both. Other similarities include the emergence of a musical subculture, a community of affinity, of people involved in the practice of playing; the reporting of epiphany experiences when people find themselves attracted, pulled, toward the music, sometimes dedicating their lives to the pursuit of the music; the Anglicization or Americanization through the creation of autochthonous instruments; and the musical, physical and operational transformations of these musical objects and systems as they enter new cultural contexts.
The Famous Mills Didjeridu List: A Digital Didjeridu Community and the Urge to Actualize.
Accepted paper for Society of Ethnomusicology conference.
Abstract text:
The development of the Internet, and in particular the introduction of the list server, enabled the formation of numerous communities of affinity to be in regular, one-click, instant communication. Email list servers became new sites for communities to congregate and flourish. This paper examines one of these communities, affectionately known as "the Famous Mills Didj List", a virtual community of didjeridu enthusiasts scattered across the globe, that formed in 1994. This group has exhibited an extraordinary urge to actualize, as evident through the arranging of a variety of face to face encounters, from individual meetings through to the organizing of informal gatherings and even the establishment of annual didjeridu festivals. The urge to actualize has also manifested through the creation of physical objects in the form of collaborative CD projects and through the sharing of physical objects with the initiation of several "Wandering Didj" projects, where a single didjeridu travels to different players in various parts of the world. This paper examines the role of the Didj List in the formation and maintenance of a virtual global didjeridu community and speculates on the causes of a virtual community’s yearning to move from the virtual to the corporeal.