I hope you enjoy this excerpt of a conversation I recently had with my friend, Sound Healer, Jared Bistrong. Jared will be presenting a live sound healing workshop online, April 24, 2021 2pm-5pm . Sound Immersion Workshop Link
Dan: When did the didgeridoo come into the picture for you?
Jared: The didgeridoo came in about two years after I'd gotten into the drum. I had a friend that I was drumming with, my best drumming partner. He was a traveler. He traveled the world a lot. One summer, he went off to New Zealand and to Australia. He always came back with some new instruments that he would buy from somewhere, some exotic instruments. This time, he came back with a didgeridoo. He was already playing it. It was good. Immediately I could tell it was a powerful instrument. At first, I didn't take to it that much. Then I decided I wanted to start blowing on his one day. I immediately got started getting the sound. I was like, "Oh, this feels really good." At that time, there weren't really any didgeridoos for sale anywhere. In fact, there wasn't even the internet. It was pre-internet. It wasn't like you could just go and buy. There weren't didgeridoos around. Nobody had seen a didgeridoo. You might have seen it on-- who knows? Probably, never. Even to this day, people haven't seen didgeridoos.
I have a brother that's in the tree business, the same brother that actually introduced me to the drum. He's played a big role in my music and sounds. I was home on vacation and went to his place where he had all of this wood. He had wood stacked up everywhere. He had a pile of bamboo that was left over from Hurricane Andrew clean up because that's what the business he was in. I grabbed a couple of pieces. I made my first didgeridoo right there. We just kind of broke it out. I made my first one. And then--
Dan: So you made your first didgeridoo out of bamboo that had been destroyed in Hurricane Andrew?
Jared: Salvaged. Yes. Yes. Destroyed
. Dan: And salvaged. It's really interesting, because the didgeridoos, traditionally, were found instruments correct?
Jared: Yes. They're found instruments. Yes.
Dan: -- that had been eaten out by termites.
Jared: Yes.
Dan: What was it? It wasn't bamboo, originally. Were they bamboo?
Jared: Traditionally, they were from the eucalyptus tree.
Dan: That is right. But they had been found, originally. I just find the correlation in modern times - in its own context - from the ashes of Hurricane Andrew. For those who don't know, Hurricane Andrew was the great hurricane of our lifetime, right, in Miami. So you made your didgeridoo. Then what?
Jared: Well, I made my didgeridoo. I came back to school. I was up at Florida State University. At the same time, I had started teaching writing classes. I was just getting ready to become a teacher. The didgeridoo was my teacher in the sense that no one had seen it, and the sound is fascinating. Once I started playing, I picked it up really quickly. Within a couple of weeks, I was already circular-breathing and playing. I carried the didgeridoo around everywhere I went. A lot of people asked, "What is that?" "Well, you play the didgeridoo." Then the first thing that people have when they hear the didgeridoo is questions. It put me in a position where I had to know what I was talking about or, at least, sound like I knew what I was talking about. I was practicing all day. This was my development as a teacher talking in front of a group, sounding teacherly, right? It just put me in a position where people had questions. They were very interested. Then I began making them. I drove down to Miami. I had a pickup truck. I loaded up a hundred pieces of bamboo. I brought them back to Tallahassee. A friend of mine and I just started making didgeridoos.
Dan: So you're playing what you're making.
Jared: Yes. I was playing what I was making. I still am today. Over the pandemic, I've made about twenty-five didgeridoos
. Dan: A lot of other instruments too?
Jared: Yes
Dan: You have a strong natural curiosity. You follow that curiosity into depth. You share that curiosity with others. Others' questions initiate and instigate and inspire your own curiosity even further. Now, you have this deep relationship with the drums and the didgeridoo. For anybody who has ever seen Jared play or experienced him in person, he becomes a conduit. He transforms when he plays the drum and when he plays the didgeridoo. There's a commonality between the two, but there's also a difference. Jared, since I've known you, you've kept acquiring new vehicles for producing sounds - we call them - instruments. Yes?
Jared: Yes.
Dan: I know you just keep adding them.
Jared: I sure do. This is how I see it. The foundation of my sound healing practice is two main instruments. The drum, that for me, will help cultivate that expression of energy, right, that represents the Yang.
Dan: Right. Yes. Yes, the "dai". We call it the "dai" but the expression. Right.
Jared: That's right, the "dai". This is something that I grew up doing, right? It is expressing myself in the physical. And so the cultivation of that yang physical energy was sports and all that type of stuff and then the drum. On the other hand, the didgeridoo, for me, was a very internal journey when I first started doing it. It demands such a level of breathing. You shut your eyes. You travel the universe. You go inward when playing. Very yin.
Dan: How far were you in your playing the didgeridoo when you became capable of doing the circular breathing?
Jared: Just a couple of weeks. It's very intuitive. It was an intuitive thing for me. When I teach people to play the didgeridoo. I always tell them, "What happens is people get stuck in their head. It's not something you do from your head. We have to get rid of overthinking. The head gets in the way. Then people can't get in touch with that intuitive side. It's a natural thing. You can just sit there and play. Naturally, you'll pick up the circular breathing, because it's a natural kind of impulse that comes. That happens.”
You can watch the full interview here:
Check out Jared’s online NSEVA Sound Healing Course Here:
https://www.nsevhealingacademy.com/courses/Exploratory-Sound-Immersion