The wind instrument known as a didgeridoo (pronounced "didge-er-ree-DOO," with the emphasis on the final syllable) sounds a bit like a jew's harp droning. It's actually a hollow tree branch about four and a half feet long, and you play it as you would a tuba, with practiced flaps of your lips. Plus, you use your tongue to produce sound effects above the basic jew's harp (or bagpipe) drone.

In Vermont Public Radio's offbeat, off-the-cuff homage to the "oldest musical instrument on the planet," Pitz Quattrone explains how Australian aborigines played the didgeridoo at least 40,000 years ago. Quattrone is perhaps more knowledgeable about the instrument than anyone in this country, and he performs a brief, accomplished recital, using the didgeridoo to imitate such natural sounds as the barking of feral Aussie dingos and the warbling of the famous Kookaburras up in the old gum tree that we know from the Down-Under song.

This amusing piece of exotica deepens when Quattrone confesses that the didgeridoo saved him during a period of personal turmoil in his life. All he needed to get himself through hard times were moments inhaling so much air he became oxygen-drunk while jamming on his hollow branches. Nowadays, during happier times, he revels in didgeridooing "for 10-15 minutes" outside in the moonlight at the end of a stressful day. His final burst of wind music is jazzy, complex.

You don't need to be a didgeridoo freak to appreciate this drop-in. One could do a lot worse than license this didgeridoozy!