iDIDJ Australia Didgeridoo Cultural Hub

As I study the language Gupapuyngu, I am immediately struck by its intimate relationship to the hard tongue technique. You learn something new every day.

Interesting... could you tell us a bit more ?

The tongue movements and positions... I am only a beginner, but it seems that he tongue movements and positions of the hard tongue technique are identical to those used to the Gupapuyngu language. And why I, as an English speaker, find some of the hard tongue difficult whereas native Gupapuyngu speakers find it easy.

Though be careful to be aware of the differences between the spoken word and yidaki playing, they are not as directly related as might seem the case.

Guan

Please explain. The similarity seems pretty obvious to me.

Hi Harry,

Ok, it's like this I think at least from my observations. A good Yolngu Matha speaker does not necessarily make a better yidaki player than a non-Yolngu Matha speaker, there are non-Yolngu didgeridoo players who play trad style pretty good yet don't know a word of Yolngu Matha, in fact, they could even be better than those who know a few words and more of Yolngu Matha.

But in a broad sense you are correct, the spoken word in Yolngu Matha and yidaki playing are similar in that they are both staccato-like in their delivery, English is a fluid language in contrast.

Cheers mate,

Guan

I could be way off here having not spoken nor played for several years, but I think the differences are more the difference between a language and music. Language is constructed differently to music and as an example, think about the use of the retroflex d and retroflex l. They rarely, if at all, occur together in matha but are used in playing yidaki, such as the retroflex glide from d to l in a music phrase such as drrrlll.

I think a little differently about it, bita. I think that the 'vocabulary' of the musician is something of a subset of the language and allows much opportunity for improvisation. Something like Skat or Rap which uses sounds from the native language in different patterns than found in normal conversational language.