Rock Talk By Larry Larason

Mourning Doves and Didjeridu-dah:
Sound reflectance in stony canyons

The first time I went to Butler Wash near Bluff, Utah looking for the Wolf Man petroglyph panel I arrived just as the sun was coming up behind me. As I approached the canyon I heard a strange sound: sort of a gritty doo-wah, doo-wah in a low register. I paused to make sure I wasn't imagining it. My mind conjured up the sound of the didjeridu and tried to match it to what I was hearing. It was similar, at least in my mind.

The didjeridu is the native Australian one-note drone instrument made traditionally of eucalyptus limbs up to six feet in length that have been hollowed out by termites. Almost any hollow tube can be used as a didjeridu -- some modern ones are made of PVC pipe. Spelling of the name varies; I am using what appears to be the most popular one on the Internet,

I had very limited directions to the rock art in Butler Wash. I wasn't sure what to expect, but the sound of a didjeridu wasn't anything I had anticipated. The sun was just beginning to illuminate the eroded stone walls below a slight overhang on the opposite side of the canyon. I continued toward the edge of a short cliff, looked across the wash and spotted eroded Puebloan ruins I hadn't known would be there. The eerie sound was louder now, seemingly amplified as it echoed off the rocks.

I stepped right to the edge and peered down into the shadows. After my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I found I was looking at water! A pool of it, filled with greenery, lay at the base of the cliff. I reorganized my perceptions, and even though I couldn't see them, I realized that the mysterious sound was made by frogs, or toads, singing a morning wake-up in unison. That was my introduction to the tricks that sound reflectance can play in stony canyons.

My experience at Butler Wash makes me want to believe a theory proposed by Richard Mattson of Prescott, Arizona. He thinks that Kokopelli, the flute player in ancient rock art, used a didjeridu rather than a flute. He points out that in some depictions of the figure the musical instrument appears to have a bell on the end. Mattson makes didjeridus like that from the flower stalks of century plants. These, he claims, resemble some of those in rock art. Unfortunately, his theory has two problems: [1] there is no record of such things in archaeological excavations, nor did any tribe at the time of contact have such musical instruments, and [2] I don't believe that century plants grow in the Ancestral Puebloan region.

Petroglyphs of flute players are found in rock art all around the Four Corners. These images are usually dubbed "Kokopelli", after the Hopi Kachina of the same name, with whom they share some attributes. Kokopelli has become an icon of the Four Corners region, appearing on everything from key fobs to pottery. Ironically, the most popular depiction, the one that looks like a stomping jazz musician with dreadlocks flying above his head, does not seem to be from the Four Corners originally, nor does it appear in rock art. As best as I can make out, this figure has been adapted from pottery motifs of the Hohokam in southern Arizona. But we've embraced him, jazzed him up, and made him our own.

Several tribes in the Southwest did use "bullroarers", flat pieces of wood whirled in a circle at the end of a thong. These would have produced a sound similar to that of the didjeridu. Bullroarers have been used worldwide to produce sounds in ceremonies and/or as a warning to the uninitiated not to intrude on a sacred rite. In the Southwest they seem to have been used most often to imitate the sound of distant thunder during rituals to conjure rain.

The echoes you hear among rock walls can heighten your experience of the wilds. On an early morning hike on Comb Ridge west of Bluff, UT, as I entered the canyon bowl where Monarch Cave is located, mourning doves were giving their plaintive calls. The sound filled the air. It was like entering a reverberating cathedral, but my thought that morning was that Elvis should have forgone his electronic echo chamber and recorded Heartbreak Hotel in that canyon.

Once at the Sego Site in Utah, while I was there alone, a train went by on the tracks about three miles to the south. The rock art is located in a shallow bowl of rock with the largest opening on the south side. The locomotive sounded as though it were coming up the dirt road toward me. Several of the figures there are Barrier Canyon Style pictographs, and I have noticed at other Barrier Canyon sites that the sound reflectance is notable. For example, at the Sinbad panel in the San Raphael Swell of Utah as I stood there listening to cars going by on the interstate, although the echo was not strong, I firmly believed that others could not sneak up on me without my becoming aware of their approach long before they arrived.

Steven J. Waller maintains a web site dealing with the acoustics of rock art sites. He believes that echoes were an important factor in how the ancients selected where to make rock art. He studies this phenomenon scientifically. Some of the sites on his list do not agree with my perceptions, but I usually travel in a group and am not likely to note the acoustics while people are talking around me. In addition, any slickrock canyon will have echoes, so I'm not convinced that it was a primary consideration of the ancient people in choosing where to place their rock art, except maybe in the case of the Barrier Canyon people.

The next time you hike into a stony canyon, give a cry or a whistle, listen to the echo, and imagine that Kokopelli is there with his flute.., or didjeridu.