Darryl Digarrnga out bush cutting mago

Here's some footage of Darryl Digarrnga (also known as Dikarrna) cutting mago out in the bush. Darryl has a preference for woolybutt and stringybark trees. He tends to go for naturally thin-walled logs, though he did cut some thick enormous trunks with huge and I mean HUGE bells.

Darryl is not yet known as a mago craftsman but instead has achieved widespread recognition as an accomplished and highly respected player. He is in demand in remote Aboriginal communities for ceremonial duties and has traveled far and wide throughout the Top End of Australia. He has teamed with some of Western Arnhem Land's greatest songmen as their didgeridoo accompanist, and is also the 'mago puller' for the famed White Cockatoo Performing Group, taking the place of his grandfather the late David Blanasi.

Darryl Digarrnga is currently artist-in-residence at iDIDJ Australia. We discovered a latent talent within Darryl for crafting fine instruments and are supporting his latest efforts in producing exemplary mago of the highest standards. Very exciting for everyone involved.

In addition to making outstanding instruments as artist-in-residence, Darryl will also be going through the iDIDJ Reference Collection of instruments in order to help document and provide provenance for mago new and old, as well as to record sample audio clips of representative instruments for education purposes.

As artist-in-residence, Darryl will also be teaching mago playing styles and techniques in workshops organised by iDIDJ Australia, and he will also be contributing to an online tutorial for the growing legion of aficionados of WAL (Western Arnhem Land) mago magic!

Take a look at the iDIDJ Australia Forum for online tutorials as well as general discussions on all things traditional:

http://forum.ididj.com.au

Category:

Music

Tags:

• darryl
• digarrnga
• dikarrna
• brown
• mialli
• rembarrnga
• white
• cockatoo
• aboriginal
• bininy
• arnhem
• gunborrk
• bulugaduru
• maningrida

[ididjaustralia]

There's more to it than too though, there are lots of different names for didgeridoo in Aboriginal languages/dialects across the Top End of Australia, and different styles of play and instrument types as well.

[sonofthedestroyer]

Guan, from your own experience, how many types of didgeridoo have you discovered in Arnhem land so far?

[ididjaustralia]

It depends on how the classification is done, what criteria are used etc. Yirdaki and mago are just generic words to denote 2 different types of didgeridoo.

[sonofthedestroyer]

It is thanks to ididjaustralia that i realised that there was a didgeridoo known as 'MAGO'. I always thought all didgeridoos were of the 'YIRDAKI' type.