Aboriginal Didjeriduists in Australian education: Cultural workers and border crossers

Abstract

Aboriginal musicians in Australia are using music in school curricula in a unique way. Increasingly over the past decade they have been introducing Aboriginal knowledge and perspectives into schools at all levels by performing and teaching with the Aboriginal musical instrument the didjeridu. Didjeriduists are at the vanguard of introducing music‐based representations of difference and self‐representations of indigeneity at the nexus of pedagogy, politics and performance. It is argued that: didjeriduists are cultural workers and border‐crossers who use Aboriginal music and musicianship to literally and figuratively sound silences; they use the didjeridu to help construct a musically informed textual space of intercultural communication that combines elements of education, empowerment and entertainment; and there is an almost surreal irony underlying their present engagement with the Australian educational system. The irony is that the very indigeneity they are now called upon to represent, may previously have been the reason for their exclusion from education.

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