Just Didgeridoo It

“Get your lips loose,” said Andrew Werderitsch to the 13 students. “Don’t worry about the spit. Get your lips as big and juicy as they can be.”

No, this isn’t a class on advanced smooching. It’s a didgeridoo workshop, the first in a planned series open to players of the Australian instrument. This one was held at the Circle, a Marina del Rey area residence that doubles as a creative space.

The didgeridoo, a long wooden pole traditionally made of eucalyptus hollowed out naturally by hungry termites, is considered one of the world’s oldest instruments. Exactly how old, however, is hard to say. “There is so much speculation,” says Mark Dunn, one of the owners of L.A. Outback in Laguna Beach, which carries a huge selection of didgeridoos ranging in price from $49 to well over $1,000. “Some people say 40,000 years. Some people say that can’t possibly be. It’s more like a couple thousand years.”

The difficulty in dating the instrument has much to do with the Australian aboriginals considered its keepers and foremost players and makers. “They don’t have a written language,” explains Dunn. “And they were nomadic people, so there’s no archeology. They were notorious for discarding and moving on.”

Whatever its age, there is no doubt about the uniqueness of the didgeridoo’s sound. It can be a low voluminous drone that seems as if it’s coming from inside the Earth or emanating from another planet. It can be a squeak or a toot, a bark or a cry. “Sometimes it scares people,” says Venice-based Werderitsch, 34. But a lot of people find it bewitching.

Many may recognize the instrument’s sound without realizing what instrument it is. The didgeridoo, as played by David Hudson, arguably the best-known aboriginal player, was featured in the opening of CBS’ “Survivor: The Australian Outback.”

“It’s my favorite sounding instrument,” said Ayernye McGuire, 36, who took the $38, three-hour workshop. Like most of the students, he brought his own didgeridoo, but some borrowed one from Werderitsch’s varied supply. Playing it, however, proved challenging for McGuire, a Malibu-based producer, and several of the other beginning students.

“I totally suck,” said Tim Timmermans, a 42-year-old jazz musician from North Hills, as a preface to his turn in front of the group. What emanated sounded more like a whoopee cushion than music.

“No,” joked Werderitsch. “You blow.”

With a little instruction from Werderitsch (“Push a little harder with your diaphragm”) and his assistant, Robin Spehar (“Your brain is thinking about your lips way too much”), Timmermans and McGuire were soon making the kinds of sounds that could rake in spare change on the Venice boardwalk, where didgeridoo players can often be heard.

“I feel good,” said McGuire. “I couldn’t even get a sound out of it at first.”

“The great thing about this instrument,” Werderitsch explained, “is the learning curve is really quick. It just takes a little practice.”

Werderitsch (who runs a Web site at www.didjeridu-ings.com) was introduced to the didgeridoo in 1993. He was hanging out with a group of percussion players. “One guy brought out a piece of PVC plumbing pipe. He referred to it as his didgeridoo. He passed it to everyone that was there. And everyone could do it. Everyone could make the basic sound.” Everyone, that is, but Werderitsch.

“I just couldn’t do it,” he says. “The kicker is, I was living in Marina del Rey and that night I took a walk. It was like 11 p.m. and I walked toward the beach. Right in my path was a long piece of cardboard tubing, like a fabric supply tube. I took out my Swiss army knife and made it a little shorter. And right then and there I made a really clear sound. I was like, ‘This is it.’ From that moment on I was sharing it with everybody.”

Many people believe the didgeridoo has therapeutic powers that benefit both the listener and the player. In fact, one woman who wandered into the class asked Werderitsch if she could stay and listen. “She’s going through a cleansing,” Werderitsch explained, as the woman lay down on a low cot in the room where the advanced players were practicing.

“I was feeling tired and worn down from being out late the night before,” said the woman, 39-year-old Maureen Blaney, a lawyer. “During the time I was [listening], I felt more life force returning. Also, I felt more aligned, as if certain blocks to my energy were removed.”

Student Andrew Gartrell, 30, of Woodland Hills also believes the instrument creates sort of internal effect. “One of the reasons I’ve been interested in learning it is I’ve been having some chest pains and the vibrations feel really good,” said Gartrell, a product designer. “It somehow seems to harmonize and synchronize all the vibrations of the body.”

According to Dunn, the didgeridoo is gaining in popularity. “In Europe, Japan and certainly Australia, it’s already been doing its thing for like 10 years, where it’s had a lot of momentum and a lot of public interest,” he says. “Here in the States it seems like just now people are starting to get turned on to the instrument. We’ve been in business six years so we’ve watched it grow. Our sales have at least doubled every year.

“It’s got such broad appeal. We sell didgs to young high school surfers, to people in their 60s and 70s, to men, women. People buy them for so many reasons. It could be just because it’s something cool or something they use for meditation, yoga, anything holistic. It’s got universal appeal.”

However, adds Dunn, any healing properties attributed to the instrument have come from modern culture. “The aboriginal people quite often find the white interpretation of using it for healing kind of ridiculous because that’s not what the didg was originally used for. It was used for ceremony. They’ll cringe when they hear people talking about its healing elements. But there’s definitely a market for it.”

Whatever the attraction, the instrument keeps gaining admirers. “I love the didgeridoo,” said Marcia Dor Etain, 27, a member of the Los Angeles band Voxbox and the lone woman in the class. “It has such an organic sound, such an earthy, deep tribal kind of sound. I think it’s a magical instrument. I’m definitely going to be playing the didg in my band.”