Leon James picks up the didgeridoo and begins to blow softly into it. As the sound increases, Dharanidharan joins him on the djembe and Charu strokes the croaking frog. The dimly lit hall at Nimble Foot Dance Academy, Singanallur, begins to recede. I am transported to the dry dusty Australian outback watching a dingo chase a Joey as the kookaburra cackles and the cane toad croaks. As the three finish their little demo, I draw a deep breath and bring myself back to Coimbatore.
Leon began his musical journey in fairly ordinary fashion with the guitar. “My family was into music; so it was natural for me to learn.” By the time he was in Std VII, Leon had finished with the guitar and moved to the keyboards. “Our Casio had lots of tunes and that got me hooked into the instruments that could produce such sounds.”
By the time he finished college, new instruments had begun to appear in India. In a fortuitous circumstance, a cousin who had moved to Australia gifted James with a didgeridoo, sparking a hitherto latent interest in exotic instruments.
When he started playing it, “the reaction was terrible,” he laughs. “My neighbours couldn’t stand the sound. My mom and dad found it odd that I would try something like this. ‘Why can’t you learn the regular stuff?’ they would ask.” Leon didn’t let this bother him. “It took me many months to get the hang of it,” he recalls. “It was all trial and error. There was no Internet or YouTube to help back then.”
He didn’t stop with playing the instrument. He began to see how he could make his own didgeridoos. He’s made around 19 in the last seven years, he says, mostly as gifts for those who were interested in learning. While he makes the instrument with fibreglass, the original is made with eucalyptus wood. “It has to be gifted by Mother Nature,” exclaims Leon, explaining how the aborigines in Australia source the wood. “It is called Yucca in their language. It cannot be made with just any eucalyptus wood. It has to be a tree with a trunk hollowed out by termites. The insects cannot eat their way out because of the oil so they concentrate on the inside. The aborigines tap on the trunk to ensure it is hollow, cut the tree down, chop off the branches and smooth the inside by filing it with a heated rod.”
As he finishes this fascinating story, I ask about the eucalyptus trees in the Nilgiris. “I’ve gone tapping the trees in Ooty to see if I could find a hollow one,” he admits sheepishly. Later he found that the termites cannot survive the cold; so no hollow trunks.
The didgeridoo is not the only exotic instrument in the room. Djembe, kalimba, croaking frog, Peruvian rattle… I’m fast losing count. Leon can play more than 14 instruments, but “some are so easy that I won’t even add them to that number, like the wind chimes or the singing bowl.”
The other instrument he’s been successful in making is the djembe. The drum looks funky with the strings tied in a diamond pattern but Leon says “it is to hold the skin — which by the way has to be goat skin; any other will change the sound — tight.” The extra loop is not a handle, as I thought. It is string that can be unravelled and used to tighten the drum to ensure that the sound is right. Leon smiles as he recalls dismantling an original drum before he began making his own; with fibreglass of course.
It’s not just foreign instruments that interest Leon. He’s learnt to play the choudki, an instrument used by transgender musicians of Karnataka and Maharashtra; the been, the snake charmer’s instrument; and the ektara or the gopichand, the one-stringed instrument, among others. “I am learning the sitar now,” he declares proudly. “I am greedy. First comes the greed to learn. Then to make it. Then to explore how the music can be used.”
As a theatre artiste and musician, Leon uses these instruments to provide live music for his productions and to show children that “there is more to music than just the guitar and the keyboards. These instruments are connected to Nature and to ancient man. Don’t stop with learning the instrument. Learn its history, who plays it, why they do so,” he exhorts.
He admits that not many of these instruments will make it to the stage on their own right. Wherever he performs live, Leon takes as many of his instruments as possible and explains what they are capable of. His dream is to “see musicians in my home town take up these various instruments, collaborate, mix, and play wonderful music. It’s happening. But slowly.”
Exotic stories too
The Peruvian Rattle is made of shells of nuts. “These are poisonous when eaten raw. There’s some way of cooking them to remove the poison,” he explains, adding that he tried to substitute the shells of the palmyra fruit. “It didn’t work. The sound comes only from these nuts.” He shakes the rattle and he hears the sound of horses galloping while I hear the sound of water falling.
The Kalimba or thumb piano is a round little box that fits perfectly into one’s cupped palms. The long metal strips are held down at one end. Plucking at the other end brings forth a shower of silvery notes. “The initial ones were made with bamboo or strips of wood. Later when metal came to be used, they would use hacksaw blades filed down.” James’ version, however, is a box-like structure. “The notes are deeper and more resonant,” he demonstrates as he speaks. “It can also be tuned.”
Info you can use
Udalveli Arts Foundation hosts a two-day didgeridoo workshop by Leon James. Instruments will be provided. Open to all. No entry fee. On-the-spot registration is available.
Nimble Foot Dance Studio, 16, Nanjappa Nagar, Behind Child Trust Hospital, Singanallur
9894350810 or 9677452833 for details
