Didgeridoo-playing Englishman's sweet sound
By Ali Ikram
Sika: He’s a didgeridoo playing Englishman named after a breed of deer.
The sound of the didgeridoo is called “the voice of the earth” – so what is this most Australian of instruments saying when played on the top of Mt Eden by an English man?
“I’m in awe for the power of this place,” he says. ‘The idea of volcanos erupting from the centre of the earth and this taking me down into the earth is a very deep dreaming – it’s like going down into the core of mother earth and listening to her voice.”
The didgeridoo is made from a Eucalyptus log hollowed out by termites; Iain Rose has been playing it for a quarter of a century.
He goes by the name Sika, after the deer that he says he developed an affinity with while growing up in south east England.
“I had a very profound experience of being snuggled up next a fawn and then my friends call me it and it stuck,” he says.
While his music appeals to a niche market there are a surprising number of people in that market.
Sika played at the Didgheadradio Festival on the Isle of Wight last year – web-streamed Didgheadradio attracts 14,000 listeners worldwide.
Steve du Feu, a tour assistant, says Sika is “introduced in Australia as one of the foremost didgeridoo players in the world and that’s an Englishman in Australia.”
The artist who lives in Golden Bay has recorded 10 albums and tonight held a small in-store at an organic café in Auckland.
Elizabeth von Madarasz, founder of the Academy of Shamanic Studies, says she sees Sika in a unique way.
“I see him as a shaman weaving and healing and aligning and balancing with sound that totally ignores the physical mind and goes straight to the cells.”
Sika’s latest album Song of Destiny