• Fred Tietjen
My meeting Fred Tietjen was prefaced by a mutual friend with "He's not really a bad guy, he's actually pretty nice." Maybe it was because he knew I learned about Fred via the Eartha Mills

Didjeridu discussion list. Maybe it was because Fred's issue oriented comments during heated discussion sometimes seemed to irritate me.

Fred's tendency to include educational, social and political agendas of Aboriginal artists in discussions about the didjeridu as well as his

 

research into the manufacturing, exporting, labeling and marketing practices of didjeridu companies in Australia and America makes him a conspicuous target. And as an an importer of fine didjeridu, one might wonder about his motivations. But once I took a stroll through the Wicked Sticks Gallery one thing became quite clear; at least where the didjeridu is concerned Fred walks the talk.

Heading into this interview, I discovered right away that I did not know Fred Tietjen at all. The illusion of familiarity inspired by e-mail chatter only left room for rather accusatory and assumptive questions on my part like "Some refer to you as the self-appointed protector of all things Aboriginal, do you deserve this title?" Fortunately for me, Fred suggested we begin again. Below is a discussion developed through May between Fred and I about the didjeridu about Fred and where the two intersect.

Naturally we'll begin with the obvious question: When did it all begin?

I was in graduate school in the early 70's studying the oral tradition of the Zuni. At the time I was interested in the intergenerational

   

transfer of knowledge in non-alphabetized cultures. During that time Nicholas Roeg's movie "Walkabout" was released and the movie piqued my interest about Australian Aboriginal people and the didjeridu. It was the first time I remember hearing the sound of the didjeridu in that soundtrack and I found it mesmerizing. 7 years later I saw and heard my first didjeridu live.

In the early 80's Charlie McMahon of Gondwanaland and Midnight Oil fame landed in San Francisco and stayed for few months. He performed solo and with a number of punk bands. One evening at the Savoy Tivolli nightclub on Grant Avenue in North Beach I was walking through the bar and I saw this fellow in a bush hat carrying two logs under his arm. I asked if they were didjeridu and he replied "Yes, this is a big fellow and this is a little fellow." I asked him if he could play them for me and he did. I was intrigued. I attended his show in the club that night and was to see him busk on the streets for a few months. An Incredible talent. I still have a cassette tape he was selling when he was busking.

Later in 1997 I was able to renew my acquaintance with Charlie in Sydney. There I interviewed him extensively about his involvement in crossing the instrument over into rock music and the punk music
 

scene in SF. I also chronicled some of his experiences in the desert with people that were coming in from out bush into the settlements in Central Australia. First contact recollections.... I'm looking forward to transcribe that material.

After Charlie came to San Francisco, Wandjuk Marika from Yirrkala followed as I recall in 1987. He was of the Rirratjingu clan from Yirrkala on Gove peninsula and an accomplished artist, statesman, singer and champion of the Aboriginal Land Right's movement. He performed a number of song cycles in Golden Gate Park. I think of him fondly as the advance guard for Yothu Yindi who came to San Francisco in 1988.

When did you first play the didjeridu?

That's an easy one. In 1985 I was at a party comprised mostly of German psychotherapists and ethnobotanists. Ralph Metzner hosted the party in Marin County outside of San Francisco. As an aside, Ralph along with Tim Leary and Richard Alpert aka Ram Das were running the Millbrook experiments at Harvard doing research in altered states of consciousness during the 1960's. At

   

one point in the evening a 4-foot PVC instrument with a 1.5-inch mouthpiece described to me as a "didjeridu" was being passed around a circle of people sitting on the floor. I didn't know how to play it, but I knew what the sound was like. When it got passed to me I blew it once or twice and on the next attempt I hit the fundamental. Wow! I've got to have one of these I thought and learn how to play it. I started a quest to find out EVERYTHING about the didjeridu. I'm still on that track today. The first Eucalyptus didj I got (1986) from Australia is 5 feet tall and weighs 19 pounds.

After speaking with you on the phone about "The Didjeridu from Arnhem Land to Internet", I felt inspired to finally check out "The Book" for myself. Despite the controversy around the excerpts from the Mills discussion list, I found it insightful. Particularly the information detailing the history of the contemporary-'ization' of the didjeridu. How did you get involved in this project?

It was entirely serendipitous. In the mid 90's Joe Catalano a former list member of [email protected], who unfortunately is no longer with us, was producing annual New Music festivals. One year he featured a weekend of performances most of which were

 

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didjeridu based. Stephen Kent of Lights in a Fat City and Trance Mission performed,as well as many others, in solo and ensemble performance using didjeridu. It was awesome. I was invited to participate in a panel discussion that weekend along with Toyoji Tomita the host of the didjeridu list. Our topic was "Exotic instruments in Experimental Music" and our focus was the didjeridu. In the audience was an Australian ethnomusicologist by the name of Hugh De Ferranti. We met after the lively panel discussion and started talking about Aboriginal Music and didjeridu. Later we became friends.

For a couple of years he would invite me in as a guest lecturer into his classes at San Francisco State University to talk about didjeridu. One day he called to tell me about a didjeridu book project in Australia that was happening, saying he didn't have time to write a chapter and so he asked me If I was interested. I was. Shortly thereafter I got a call from Karl Neuenfeldt who reconfirmed my interest and asked me what I wanted to write about. I told him I was interested in writing about Aboriginal perspectives on the didjeridu.

My chapter was a collaborative one,an interview with David Hudson, called "Didjeridu: Portal to Culture". It was that was done

   

over my kitchen table in 1995. The transcribed text was 35 pages. The chapter was edited down to 12 pages over 6 months. When I sent a final draft to David for corrections and approval he crossed out two sentences and substituted a few words.

The book is the first comprehensive study about the didjeridu. It was published by John Libby Press and Perfect Beat Journal which is currently edited by Karl Neuenfeldt. The most important feature about the book, from my point of view, is that it is a cross-cultural collaboration. It received major Aboriginal support. The prologue was done by Mandawuy Yunupingu of Yothu Yindi who was also the Australian of the year in 1992. Aboriginal educators and recording artists Kev Carmody and Mick Davison are in there as well. The book was released in 1997, sold out its first printing, and is into it's second printing now and published in America by Indiana University press. The book was well received by ethnomusicological journals and by Aboriginal media in Australia.

Have you conducted any other interviews and are any of them currently available?

Yes, a few that are published and some others... Mandawuy Yunupingu of Yothu Yindi, Alan Dargin, and Stephen Kent. I did

   

those for Rhythm Music Magazine and Talking Leaves Journal. I also have 25 hours of interviews with various Aboriginal artists that I've been transcribing that will be forthcoming.

How did you become associated with Clarion's Wicked Sticks Gallery and Stephen Kent?

In 1989 or 90 a mutual friend introduced me to James Ma and Clara Hsu owners of Clarion Music Center. I had been collecting didjeridu since 1986. They had a few instruments so I would go and check out what they had. At the time a friend of mine who wrote for the San Francisco Examiner had a syndicated business column called Pacific Rim. I turned him onto the didj and, on a lark, he ran a short piece talking about the didjeridu as a future Pacific Rim business. He ran my telephone number. All of a sudden I started to get telephone calls and my hobby turned into a part-time business of dealing a few instruments to support my habit of collecting. Eventually Clarion expanded their store space and asked me if I was interested in formalizing our relationship. Some time later, Stephen Kent arrived in town. We collaborated on a few didjeridu events in which he performed and I taught didjeridu workshops. Clara Hsu of Clarion was a music educator who had a space,

 

Stephen Kent was a consummate performer growing in popularity, both as a player and a teacher, and I was interested in collecting and playing the best instruments and putting together educational programs featuring Aboriginal artists. We all got together and decided to have a go at it. It's a collaborative effort and it's been fun.

But you don't do this, that is import didjeridu, for a living do you? What is your "real job?"

I am employed by Woodfish Institute a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit Native American educational organization that accepts tax deductible contributions. It fosters the preservation of traditional knowledge systems and links indigenous worldviews to planetary survival. The URL is www.woodfish.org. I work as an advisor and I have an affiliated private practice doing counseling. I work with a multicultural population which includes Native Americans. I've presented my work as part of the public program series at the San Francisco Jung Institute and in conjunction with my wife (Native American clinical psychologist Dr. Leslie Gray) at Esalen and Naropa institutes.

   

How did the Wicked Sticks Gallery come into being?

Well...the foundation of Wicked Sticks Gallery is about cultural awareness through music. We have a performance space that holds 70 people and we work with the surrounding school districts in Northern California creating curriculum for World-Music programs.

Over the last 12 years I have had the opportunity to meet and form lasting relationships with Aboriginal artists from all over Australia some of whom are didj players and others who aren't. Walpari, Yuin, Bundjalung, Guguyangili,Gumatj, Rirratjingu, Galpu, Djapu, Dhalwangu and Wardaman peoples. This inspired me to try and provide a forum for them in America to perform and speak about the didjeridu and Aboriginal culture in a variety of workshop formats and concerts. I hoped that by taking this approach players of the didjeridu would come to know the instrument as it is presented by Aboriginal people themselves sans the New Age hype and the commodification of the didjeridu that has taken place with regard to Aboriginal cultures.

(Information about these programs can be found in the MECCA section of this report)
 

Tell me about the collection of instruments currently in Wicked Sticks Gallery at Clarion? How did they get there?

The instruments are the result of 12 years of intercultural rapport building with one community in NE Arnhem Land. The instruments are made by Djalu Gurruwiwi and David Howell and a few by Billy Yallawanga. We have about 70instruments on display some of which are in a permanent collection for people to play and see. The instruments are all documented with information about the paintings.

I'll try to describe for you what my experience is of them. Imagine your most perfect yidaki. Shape, backpressure, resonance, bore dimensions, wall thickness, mouthpiece size, finish, and 40,000+ year old clan paintings by some of the most talented artists in Arnhem Land. Each instrument allows you to explore different aspects of the soundscape of didjeridu. The instruments have heart, soul and spirit. There's over a decade of stories and personal relationships that are the foundation for the collection.

The yidaki are all commissioned ones made by Djalu and David Howell for Wicked Sticks. The production of these instruments is

 

  

very limited. Besides being a very gifted maker, David Howell stabilizes Djalu's instruments and Eucalyptus Tetradonta with a proprietary process he developed over the years. It works. David Howell is also a "co-developer and architect" of Wicked Sticks Gallery as well. Having said that, I feel very blessed to be able to be the curator of what has turned into a yidaki museum and educational center where you can pick up and play extraordinary instruments. I sit down

photo courtesy Fred Tietjen

on a log in the gallery once or twice a week and just look at them and go, WOW, what beauty! Walking into the gallery is a visually entrancing experience and picking up the instruments and playing them is sonically powerful.

Many of the instruments are quite large. Like 15-25+ pounds and 5 to 6 feet tall, pieces of architecture, really.... very fast and wicked and in many instances subsonic floor rumblers. The gallery has always been about having a space where people can congregate and play. It's a warm and friendly place.

 

How did you meet Djalu?

In 1988 I met the members of Yothu Yindi and we became friends. Over the years from 1992-1996 the band revisited America. When they would come through San Francisco we would get together at my home before shows. My wife, Leslie Gray, is someone they grew fond of. She is Oneida and Seminole ,a prominent Native American educator and Clinical Psycholgist who is one of the first Native Americans the band met along with John Trudell and Quiltman. Sometimes I would meet up with Yothu Yindi on the road and attend shows. I was their biggest fan and still am. I played my first Djalu in 1988 back stage when they toured with John Trudell and Midnight Oil. All the Yothu Yindi band instruments are made by Djalu.

Over the years various band members would invite me to come to Australia and I kept putting it off. I had a busy life here in America and I knew if I went to Australia I would need to spend a good deal of time. Finally in 1997, after the book was released, I decided to go. I spent June, July, and part of August in YY community on Gove peninsula. My host was Makuma Yunupingu-- singer, yidaki player and songwriter for Yothu Yindi.I met him in 1992 and we became friends. I stayed in the house of Galarrwuy Yunupingu,Makumas father, who is head of the Northern Territory Land Council.

   

Galaruwuy Yunupingu (Gumatj clan) is an indefatigable leader of the Aboriginal Land rights and Human Rights movement and I admire him very much. When he was 17 years old he was involved in the landmark Land Right's case from 1970 of Milirrpum and Others vs. Nabalco Pty. Ltd along with Roy Dadynga Marika (Rirratjingu clan), Daymbalipu Mununggurr (Djapu Clan) and Wulanybuma Wunungmurra (Dhalwangu clan). Galarrrwuy was one of two translators who simultaneously translated and had to explain Aboriginal concepts of Land Tenureship in terms that a European Court System could understand. Though Yolngu later lost that case It set the stage for the Mabo Decision which later struck down the legal concept of "terra nullius" the legal principle by which Australia was claimed by the British Crown as unoccupied land. Bye the way, all the members of Yothu Yindi are the descendants of the founders of the Aboriginal Land Rights movement. This set the back-drop for my meeting of Djalu.

Djalu lived about 200 yards from where I was staying. I'd wander down the road and watch him work on yidaki and watch his wife and daughters paint yidaki.

It's obvious who your favorite yidaki makers are, but who is your favorite yidaki player?

   

I'm glad you asked. I have many. Milkayungu Mununggurr--the "boss" of Yidaki-- and the original yidaki player of Yothu Yindi. The list goes on... Makuma Yunupingu,Kevin and Yomono Yunupingu of Yothu Yindi,, David Hudson, Alan Dargin, Mark Atkins, Janawirri Yiparrka, Stephen Kent, Charlie McMahon, Richard Man from SF and Brad Smith from San Francisco who will be joining me for the Yidaki Master Class this July in Arnhem Land.

Also, the boys in the communities who are about ten years old including, Vernon Gurruwiwi. I have some great recordings of their playing techniques on -- pvc pipe! It was easier for me to follow what the younger boys were doing technique wise. By the time someone is 16 or 17 the playing is so advanced and multi-layered it is too hard for me to deconstruct.

While you were there you took the photos that comprise "Fred's Slide Show" (at least that's what the folk's who've seen it call it). Unfortunately I was so distracted by the instruments I didn't get a chance to see it while I was there. Tell me a little about it.

Well I took about 650 slides when I was in Arnhem Land. Most of the shots are personal that I don't show. The ones I do show comprise a slide

   

show which documents Djapu, Galpu and Gumatj clan techniques of yidaki making. I can give it in a 1.5-hour version or a 3 plus hour version. It's an educational slide show that documents "Everything you have wanted to know about didjeridu" and it covers a fair amount of social and political history of Australia as told to me by the Aboriginal leaders of the Land Rights movement afoot in Australia today.

I met you at Clarion quite by chance. I was there to take a lesson from Stephen (Kent) and do a little shopping for myself and didn't know you would arrive. You seemed to have an agenda of your own that day so our communication was brief, and I don't imagine ordinary. What is a typical day like at Clarion when you are with a didjeridu customer?

Well the instruments can always be played there 6 days a week 11:00AM -6:00PM. I'm there on appointment basis. If someone calls me we meet and I go through the collection of instruments and explain about their construction, the paintings etc. Then I start handing instruments to people one by one and answering their questions. After a few hours I have my slides in the store and sometimes do an impromptu show and/or we usually go to lunch in Chinatown where we talk more about didjeridu. It's real social. I encourage people to come and spend at least few days

   

playing the instruments. It's a great diversion from my day to day work and I enjoy this part of it very much.

Seems like didjeridu grabbed you even more radically than it grabbed me--of course I'm only a couple years into it now, so I can still hope. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Yes, my passion for the didjeridu opened up a lot of things for me. I've been really fortunate in whom I've been able to meet. My playing skills are just basic but I really love getting inside the sound of the didjeridu and I like where the didjeridu has led me. What little I know about yidaki has come from Aboriginal people who have been extremely patient and generous with me over the years.I am very thankful and will always treasure these relationships. Next month, I'll be attending the master class given by Djalu in Gove peninsula in NE Arnhem Land as part of a festival to inaugurate the Yothu Yindi Foundation and the Garma Cultural Institute. I'm looking forward to seeing all my friends and family and learning more about yidaki The Yidaki masterclass is being organized by David Howell and Catherine Pettman on behalf of the Yothu Yindi Foundation. I'm think I'm going to have a lot a fun.

 

So, as much fun as it was to get to know you, there's alot of ground we were unable to cover that I'm very interested in, particularly information regarding the didjeridu industry. I'd like to do a follow up interview about this a little later in the year.

Sure, how about after I return from Arnhem Land....

Groovy. Thanks Fred, for taking the time to chat with me, too bad our paths don't cross while we are in OZ. For everyone's information, Fred has a didjeridu website that should be up before 2000, the URL? www.didjeridu.com naturally. Fred can be reached by: