So what do you do
after graduating from Oxford University with a Ph.D. in solid state
physics? If you’re Graham Wiggins, start up a music career
with the didgeridoo.
“I was in England trying to finish my Ph.D. and I’d run
out of money, so I started taking the didgeridoo out on the street
and playing with a hat out,” Wiggins said. “I thought
I’d try that instead of phoning my parents for money, and it
went really well. I met a guitarist and we started playing together.
We made good money and got a record deal.”
Since then, Wiggins has released three albums under his nickname,
Dr. Didg. On his band’s latest release “Dust Devils,”
Wiggins and company manage to push the boundaries of a genre that
might easily be filed away under world music.
Listening to “Dust Devils,” the tracks flow seamlessly
together in a mixture of hard house music tapering off into trance,
but all tracks are held together by the hypnotic drone of Wiggins’
didgeridoo.
While “Dust Devils” is musically an impressive feat, bringing
it to a live audience is even more so.
“That’s been a challenge for us on this album in particular,”
Wiggins said of bringing the music to a live audience. “We’ve
chosen some of the tunes that seem more approachable, and we’ve
managed to get five tunes from the album working live. We’ve
avoided having to run anything off tape. That’s one of the
things we felt we might have to do, but when we tried it last year
we didn’t like the result.”
As a result, Dr. Didg will arrive at Boone’s The Spot as a
four-piece touring outfit, comprised of Wiggins handling the didgeridoo,
Geoff Girsh on guitar, bassist Mike Weafer and drummer Ryan Krieger.
A further trick Wiggins uses to jump the hurdle of electronica into
live music is a technique he calls “live sampling.”
“I play a particular rhythm over and over again, and then by
hitting a pedal I can record what I’m playing and have it come
back as a loop and then I can build on that,” Wiggins said.
While musically impressive, it brings up the question of how an
undergraduate student at Boston University becomes immersed in an
instrument that most American students have only a fleeting interest
in, if any.
“I went to Boston University, and I saw somebody play one,”
Wiggins said. “This guy was just playing a cardboard tube,
and I realized the didgeridoo itself is just a tube. It can be a
PVC pipe, a post from a parking meter, something like that.”
Since then, Wiggins’ hobby has opened him to not only the music
world but also a unique opportunity to stay with the native people
of Elcho Island, located in northern Australia.
After much trial and error, Wiggins was invited to stay for three
months attending ceremonies and honing his skills on the didgeridoo.
“I was adopted into a clan, which is a fairly normal thing,”
Wiggins said. “Anybody who stays there, they want you to belong
to one clan or another so they know where you fit into the system.
That meant whenever my clan had a ceremony I could go and sit right
next to the song master and the didgeridoo player and spend the
whole day just listening.”
As for the ceremonies, Wiggins explained that a typical ceremony
could last anywhere from a week to three weeks, detailing an elaborate
story or describing a journey.
Bringing all his experiences from the world over, Dr. Didg is shaping
up to be unlike any dance music to have hit Boone.
Dr. Didg will be appearing Saturday at The Spot. The music begins
at 11 p.m., with $5 admission. The show is restricted to ages 18
and up. For more information on Dr. Didg, visit the website at:
www.drdidg.com. |
