‘Why I picked the didgeridoo’
The didgeridoo — the long, tubular wind instrument with a lowing sound that’s become increasingly popular in recent years — has been used by the indigenous peoples of Northern Australia to guide and initiate meditation for at least 1,500 years.
Modern-day players describe the act of playing it as mindful, calming. Amar Kulkarni from Pune says it helps him find his “tranquil self”.
Kulkarni, who plays the drums and keyboard, describes first seeing the instrument on TV in 2009. Immediately, he says, he knew he had to find one. “A rich, complex culture holds up the piece,” says the 41-yearold, a folk music lover and vice-president at a software company. A group on Facebook led him to craftsmen who were making didgeridoos in Varanasi. That’s where he got his first one. He now owns three.
Although a wind instrument, a didgeridoo can keep rhythm. “It produces a continuous drone if the right vibrations are fed into it,” Kulkarni says. “Had I been looking to it for melody, I’d have been disappointed. But I keep going back to my didgeridoos to draw energy from them. As the thing drones, I find myself on that fine line of balance — neither high nor low.”
Because you have to breathe from the diaphragm when playing it — a practice also universally used as a calming exercise — playing the instrument is energising, says Divyas Bardewa, 31, a session guitarist from the hill town of Kalimpong in West Bengal. His two-year journey with the instrument came at the right time, he adds.
“I chanced upon the didgeridoo at a music festival in 2018 and was enthralled by the sound. No other device has hit me with such a sense of profoundness,” Bardewa says. Playing it is contemplative, relaxing.
Typically, a didgeridoo is large, between 3 and 10 ft long. There are didgeridoos made from plastic, but ideally they should be made from wood (traditionally but not necessarily eucalyptus). “The most authentic of these instruments are made by cleaning bamboo stems that have been naturally hollowed out by termites. I have one made of a log of agave that was split in two, hollowed out and stuck back together,” Kulkarni says.
Bardewa owns didgeridoos made from agave and Himalayan bamboo. He starts his mornings playing one, and the circular breathing technique involved helps with his pranayama yoga asana too. “I think this dose of calmness stays with me through the day,” he says. “And I’m better able to deal with unwanted situations as a result.”