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Down with the down-under sounds |
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Written by Kurt Brighton
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Thursday, 17 January 2008 |
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If you talk with foreign musicians traveling to America from abroad, you will find that they often suffer from some degree of culture shock. We are weirder than you think.
But an even greater shock, at least for musicians coming to the States from Australia, is the weather. For didgeridoo player and multi-instrumentalist Xavier Rudd, landing in a bleak and rainy Los Angeles was a bit strange, having just left the sun-drenched shores of his native Bell’s Beach in Southern Victoria, featured in the film Point Break.
“We’re in San Diego, and the sun is shining for the first time since we got to America,” he said outside a coffee shop. “When we left home it was 40 degrees, so it’s been pretty different. For you guys that’s like 100 or something.”
Of course, the weather and the ubiquity of Starbucks and Wal-Mart isn’t the only thing that separates us from the Aussies. There’s a few thousand miles of ocean, but perhaps more importantly there’s thousands of years of culture, too. Rudd plays the didgeridoo, known as the Yidaki to the aborigines who invented it some 50,000 years ago. And although Rudd is of European stock, his connection to that ancient culture and land informs everything he does musically.
“To be a didgeridoo player where I’m from is not really that strange,” he said. “I’ve had an affinity for it since I was a kid. I’m not sure how it started, but I’ve always been a fan of music. When I was little kid I have memories of ‘playing’ on the end pipe of the vacuum cleaner.”
From appliance-based compositions, Rudd has moved on to play a cross-section of instruments that make him look like he’s trapped behind some bizarre invention of William Burroughs’ mind when he’s on stage. In addition to three didgeridoos, he simultaneously plays slide guitars, stomp boxes, djimbes, various other drums and percussion instruments and harmonica. Oh, and somehow he sings too. But it’s not a novelty act; there’s just always some new sound he wants to add.
“(The set-up) has sort of grown as I’ve gone,” Rudd said. “I’m always trying to include different sounds and it’s just continued to grow organically. I’ve not been really conscious of it.”
What he is conscious of, and what has informed his writing up to and including his fourth release, “White Moth,” is a profound sense of connection with something larger than the human meat we’re all trapped in. He sings in a way that eerily matches the underlying drone of the didgeridoo, at times channeling the voices of Devendra Banhart or Paul Simon in a sort of meditative mantra, yet with a liveliness that belies the peaceful nature of his message. In a sense, Rudd’s homeland created him, and it is with him wherever he goes.
“I come from a powerful place,” he says. “I grew up almost in the bush, and I spent a lot of time on my own, camping. It’s a beautiful place. A lot of places I travel, there’s a lot of different understanding of how the world works. I feel really lucky when I go home, with what I have. We live in a time when this human existence is largely out of our hands, and there’s a lot of deterioration around. But we live in a time when we can still enjoy many of the wonders of the gifts that the earth offers. Who knows what will be around in 100 years?”
For Rudd, his music is a connection to something sacred and ancient that he can carry around with him.
“My music has always been that way, since I was a child, a place beyond this world,” he said. “It’s the same thing for me today. It’s still my place that I go to—I just happen to be entertaining people while I’m doing it.”
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