GOMA SONIC

Osaka techno DJ Goma weaves the didgeridoo
into the future sound of music

Text = Leeroy Betti
Photography = Shaun Maddux

Musicians have explored old instruments in the search for new sounds ever since George Harrison and the Beatles lugged a sitar back from India in the late 1960s.

None challenged the guitar as the wandering minstrel's instrument of choice until recently, when travellers started appearing in the strangest places with a hollowed wooden tube strapped to the back of their packs.

Still largely regarded the domain of its traditional Aboriginal owners in Australia, the didgeridoo's mesmerising mantra can be heard from the bars of Seattle and the marijuana-clouded streets of Indian villages to zippy, techno-head summer festivals touring Europe.

The instrument's appeal is now blossoming in Japan and it could be here that the didgeridoo makes the leap from fashionable garnish to key ingredient in the cocktails of new music being mixed up around the planet. If it does, it will be due in part to Morimoto Goma, a 26-year-old Osaka techno DJ who has grafted the instrument deeper into popular music than most of his contemporaries.

While the didgeridoo has provided soul-moving accompaniment to many imaginative bands for years, Goma prefers that it take center stage in an orchestra of electronica that lifts its earthy growl toward the cosmos. Goma's approach to the didgeridoo as a source of music and not just backing rhythm is related to his introduction to the instrument - which contrasts starkly with that of many other exponents who stumbled across it while trekking across Australia.

"My friend went to England five years ago and got an English didgeridoo at the Glastonbury music festival," says Goma. A key event in music history for 20 years, the festival where bands like Led Zeppelin and Nirvana celebrated their investiture as global rock 'n' roll conquerors has been important in resonating the didgeridoo's message for bands like The Levellers, now one of Goma's favorites, and Japan's own rainbow tribe warriors Tenkoo Orchestra, who played there in 1996 and 1997.

But having never heard or laid eyes on the odd-looking ornament his friend placed before him in 1994, Goma was free to develop his own technique. He fused the instrument into the digital music he had been playing in the Osaka club scene and quickly gathered a dedicated following.

However, Goma still knew only two other Japanese didgeridoo players when he left Japan to seek out more in Australia two years later. In the continent's isolated north, he was invited into the Aboriginal-owned province of Arnhem Land.

"I felt some big spiritual things there," Goma says. "That didgeridoo they play is not for music. That is for ceremony." The realization temporarily brought his music to a halt. "But after a while I felt very Japanese, so I wanted to play the didgeridoo my own way."

His melding of the didgeridoo with dance music has gained endorsement from arguably Australia's most well-known didgeridoo player, Charlie McMahon, who believes Goma's commitment to musical exploration puts him on safer ground than the many "New Age" exploiters before him who stole Aboriginal culture for commercial gain.

"New music is inevitable and after seeing their culture appropriated for so long, they get a kick out of it," says McMahon, who regards Goma as one the most talented didgeridoo exponents he has ever heard. Goma is stunned by the mushrooming interest in the didgeridoo and the number of new players since his return to Japan in May 1998.

"Japan now has two muscians' groups - Japan Didgeridoo Association, and Did You Read & Do - and there mus be 1,000 players here," he says. Goma believes the ceremonial instrument holds a power to spur people to action - a quality flowing from its reliance on breath, the very essence of life, and its relationship to meditation. "It sounds a lot like o-kyo - Buddhist sutras." Key to its popularity in Japan, he surmises, is the population's openess to influence.

Despite growing recognition in Japan's rainbow and rave scenes, his appearance before thousands partying at Mount Hakusan in 1997 and a hard-core cult following complete with fawning groupies, he plays down his own contribution. "I think it has more to do with people like Jamiroquai using the didge in mainstream music."

However Goma's fortunes have risen in sync with those of the didgeridoo, making for a well-timed release of his album, "Wave, Where You Gonna Go," late last year. The album, largely acoustic didgeridoo, accompanying exotic instruments and a sprinkling of electronica has been distributed in the UK, US and Australia this year. Potentially more influential is his third album, "Vibes Vender," a hardcore dance disc released on vinyl specifically for the club music scene.

Leeroy Betty is Aboriginal affairs reporter for the The West Australian currently on assignment in Japan.