Indigenous Australian Culture - Music

Music

Aborigines have developed unique instruments and folk styles. The didgeridoo is commonly considered the national instrument of Australian Aborigines, and it is claimed to be the world's oldest wind instrument. It was traditionally played by Arnhem Land people, such as the Yolngu, and then only by the men.

It has possibly been used by the people of the Kakadu region for 1500 years. Clapping sticks are probably the more ubiquitous musical instrument, especially because they help maintain rhythm. More recently, Aboriginal musicians have branched into rock and roll, hip hop and reggae. Yothu Yindi is one of the most well known modern bands playing in a style known as Aboriginal rock.

Read more about this topic:  Indigenous Australian Culture

Famous quotes containing the word music:

    From where Pan’s cavern is
    Intolerable music falls.
    Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
    Belly, shoulder, bum,
    Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
    Copulate in the foam.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    If music be the food of love, play on,
    Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,
    The appetite may sicken and so die.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,—at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on the sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)