Ladies — don’t didgeridoo!

Turns out the Australian version of the ”Daring Book for Girls” was encouraging them to be more than daring — it was urging them to live very dangerously indeed.

According to the news, someone forgot to tell the authors that the didgeridoo was only to be played by males. 

Mark Rose, head of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association, said the publisher made “an extreme faux pas” by including a chapter on how to play the Aboriginal musical instrument in its Australian edition.

Traditionally, women do not play the didgeridoo, a long, hollow wooden tube played by buzzing the lips into one end.

While different Aboriginal communities have varying ideas on what will or will not happen to a woman who touchs the didgeridoo, most seem to agree that it is the man’s role to play the mostly ceremonial instrument.

So I’m guessing research is not the strong point of the book’s editors.  What else do they suggest?  Shark hugging?  Copperhead cuddling? According to Mark Rose

“We know very clearly that there’s a range of consequences for a female touching a didgeridoo. Infertility would be the start of it, ranging to other consequences,” he said. “I won’t even let my daughter touch one.”

And a little cultural sensitivity might be nice.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 8:47 am and is filed under Industry, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.