The unofficial didgeri-doobie

Britt Coker interviews a World music maker who has travelled the globe, playing and teaching tribal music that has inspired people to go on their own journeys, seeking deeper connections with others, and the Earth.

It all started with a souvenir didgeridoo that wasn’t his. Teenaged Jeremy Cloake was at his friend’s place one day, and while Geoff struggled to get a sound out of his new instrument, Jeremy seemed to have a knack for it, so Geoff gave the didgeridoo to him.  And that’s how Jeremy ended up onstage one day, jamming with the Doobie Brothers.

“I never really got into guitar. It always felt congested with the wrist movement and stiff on the [guitar] neck, and I played around on drums a little bit too. But the didgeridoo just had this kind of mysticism that as a 16-year-old I was kind of drawn into, which was great because it opened up whole other parts of me that were more connected to the Earth, and more spiritually inclined, I guess you'd say.”

After high school, Jeremy worked at an African arts gallery in Ponsonby and met many West African musicians through the gallery owner. His initial goal, aged 18, was to save enough money to make a didgeridoo recording (which he went on to do, ‘Resonance’ sold thousands of copies). But he was influenced and inspired to learn how to play West African percussion instruments. It was a natural transition then, for someone who loved music of the world, to leave New Zealand to discover it. With his interest in the didgeridoo, Arnhem Land in Northern Territory became his new home where he lived and worked for four years with the Yoingu people. He learnt their language, how to make and play the yidaki, and helped develop the local arts centre.

The yidaki looks like a didgeridoo, but isn’t one. Didgeridoo is not an aboriginal name for the instrument but an early colonial christening bestowed for the sounds it makes. The people of the land have lots of different names for it, usually translating in their regional dialects the equivalent of ‘hollow log’. In Australia, the term yidaki is most commonly used, though it is a specific type of instrument made by the Yoingu people of Arhem Land in Northern Territory. To the untrained eye and ear, it looks the same but is played very differently and therefore produces a different range of sounds.

“The first thing that I did there, working with the yidaki makers, was to provide them with an outlet for their tradition so they could sell it and keep that tradition strong. It's mostly the young men that make the instruments and the young men are the most at risk, so having something that keeps them strong in their culture, and active, motivated and inspired is a really good thing when they are facing so many challenges and their community is being displaced.”

What did they teach you by living with them?

“Acceptance. Just allowing things to be, and forgiveness as well. People there can say some pretty outrageous things sometimes, especially when there's not a sense of the bigger picture, knowing what’s going on. So, there's a lot of tolerance and forgiveness. Living in the community itself is very challenging because there's a lot of social complexity with kids just having to find their way into a bicultural world that they're not necessarily prepared for.

“There's this insular aspect of their society which is really beautiful, and then it needs someone from the outside to kind of bridge it into the western world…The art centre itself is a beautiful model for collaboration between both worlds and, in some cases, worlds that are radically opposed to each other, and you just have to find a solution.”

Jeremy’s work in Arnhem Land, promoting the yidaki and culture, took him around the world, performing, teaching, and facilitating workshops. In 2005, a tussle with cancer (he won) brought him back to New Zealand and serendipitously through a door into his ancestral past.

“I was driving back from my sister's wedding, and I got this feeling to stop in at Whakarewarewa and there was a taonga pūoro wānanga (forum on traditional Māori instruments) and I was like, ‘Wow, what’s this?’ Not knowing about it but stumbling across it, from the Māori perspective, is guided by wairua (spirit) and it really felt that way. I made a porotiti (spinning disc) and a couple of pūtōrino (flutes) with the help of Brian Flintoff [an acclaimed artist and carver]) who became one of my kaiako (mentors). He’s an amazing man. That kind of kicked off my interest and involvement in taonga pūoro which is an expression of myself through my whakapapa from Puketeraki Marae, just north of Dunedin.”

Jeremy’s full immersion in taonga pūoro was a turning point for this gifted musician. Not just because of the stronger connection it gave him to his Māori heritage, but the responses he has subsequently witnessed as a musician sharing the unique sounds of Aotearoa with others.

“The responses to taonga pūoro are just so incredibly deep, and this is in the context of me working with instruments like the yidaki that you’re playing with traditional techniques. Instruments that I say have integrity within their sound. They are from a natural source and they remind us of our relationship to the Earth and to the elemental world. However, with taonga pūoro there's just this thing that catches people. It's difficult to encapsulate because it's so broad but it's a way of opening people into a deeper sense of feeling again.”

“People often just cry. And these are men in their sixties. They say things like, ‘I just never heard anything like that before, I don't know where this came from’. It's a mystery to them. It's often associated with the connectedness that is being re-established because of how we live. A lot of people in urban environments are disconnected from the natural world they live in.”

“The first place I started working as a musician officially was Japan and my yidaki classes were full every time because people were exploring a sense of connectedness to the natural world by playing a musical instrument that is essentially as natural as it gets. A hollow tree trunk eaten by termites. Long term that turns into a kind of change in lifestyle for people, and their worldviews have changed. It opens up into an exploration of identity and connectedness with others - who am I and how am I living?  All of these things come up simply through hearing a sound, playing a sound, becoming involved in the frequency of it. It's a wonderful thing to be part of and to witness.”

“Often we hongi our instruments first, so I've got a pūtōrino that I love to play. I always give it a little hongi first because it's Hine Raukatauri’s voice (goddess of the flute) and mine together. I provide the breath and she talks, so it’s a collaboration. It’s not me doing it, it’s us doing it and I like that conceptually, with all of the instruments that I play.”

Although he’s performed all over the world, Jeremy doesn’t actually see himself as a performer. Teaching is his happy place. Additionally, most of his audience members wouldn’t realise the significance, but much of the traditional music he plays is ceremonial rather than for light entertainment. Having said all that, he is the unofficial didgeri-doobie brother and still plays publicly, when asked.

“I was helping a friend out on the gallery in Manly and Pat Simmons and his son came in. He’s one of the original band members, they were looking at the didgeridoos and I just demonstrated a couple of them and they said, ‘Do you wanna come along and play tonight?’ So I showed up and played on this track and just the roar from the crowd was awesome. It was one of those musical moments of complete trust on both of our sides. There was no rehearsal.”

In January 2023, Jeremy discovered he had acute angle-closure glaucoma which has impacted his vision, but not his willingness to carry on making music. The diagnosis has been the impetus to write and record more music. So to recap, Jeremy is a world musical instrument maker, composer and teacher, a carver and player of taonga pūoro, leading expert and player of the yidaki and one-time band member of the Doobie Brothers. In addition, he plays instruments well enough to make grown men cry and/or reevaluate their lives.  If you’d like that to be you, Jeremy has recently settled in Nelson where he plans to teach world music and move locals to tears for the foreseeable future.

jeremycloake.com