Soul of the wind

Peter Ellertsen

Illinois Times April 19, 2001: 9

A haunting, pure, clear melody rises from Terry Travis’ cedar flute, like the smoke of burning sweetgrass or the song of a prairie bird.

Six of us are seated in folding chairs on the stage of Ursula Hall at
Springfield College in Illinois, where the acoustics best enhance the soft
flute tones. Travis is sharing with [former] SCI music director Jim Harris’ music
history class his love for the Native American instrument.

“You’ll hear it sometimes at a powwow,” Travis says. “Usually it’s just one
or two people playing. You might hear it during the opening ceremonies, but
it’s a quiet sound. I consider it a personal instrument.”

As he demonstrates how the design of a traditional Lakota flute channeled
air through a reed-like opening, Travis’ cell phone rings. Bleep BLEEP
ble-blee BLEEP-BLEEP, it tweedles as he fishes it out of a pocket. It’s the
theme from Carmen.

What draws Travis to the Native American flute is simply a love of music.
Like George Bizet’s French opera about Spanish gypsies, it transcends
cultural boundaries.

“I got started when I heard it at a powwow in Gallup, New Mexico, and I was
immediately taken by the sound of it,” Travis told Harris’ students. “I’d
always wanted to learn an instrument that was kind of personal, and I didn’t
have years to spend learning how to play it. It’s a great improvisational
instrument.”

That was 10 years ago. Now Travis, a psychiatrist and emeritus professor at
Southern Illinois University Medical School, is working to start a flute
circle or informal learners’ group in Springfield. ...

          * * *

The cedar flute developed in the late 1800s among the Lakota people, also
known as the Sioux. Young men perfected individual styles of playing to
attract the attention of young women, and a premium was put on
self-expression.

“If you were interested in a young lady, you’d make a flute and play it, and
maybe she’d come out,” Travis said. “So it was a courting flute.”

Like powwow dancing, weaving, metalworking, literature and so many other
Native American arts, the cedar flute has enjoyed a renaissance in the last
40 to 50 years. And as the arts always do, it reaches across cultural
boundaries.

Traditional artists of the Northern Plains tribes have passed the tradition
on to musicians of other nations. And musicians like R. Carlos Nakai, of
Dine (Navajo) and Ute heritage, have taken it far beyond its original
cultural boundaries.

“Nakai is Native American, but he’s very ecumenical,” said Travis, who has
studied under him. “He says the flute came to him. He’s a classically
trained trumpet player, a professional musician. He was one of the first
people to bring back the flute as a recognized (concert and recording)
instrument, and he has about 30 CDs out now.”

Nakai’s CDs suggest the range of his interests. He has recorded Zuni,
Lakota, Athabascan and Omaha melodies, Christmas carols, “Amazing Grace,”
jazz and orchestral chamber music. He has performed with Africa
percussionists and Japanese shakuhachi flute players, and his artistry
extends to experimentation with digital technology in the studio. Playing
with keyboardist Larry Yanez in a band called Jackalope (named for a
mythical beast said to be half jackrabbit and half antelope), he transcends
other cultural boundaries in a fusion style they call
“SynthacousticpunkarachiNavajazz.”

Cultural diversity has its less welcome side, too. Cedar flute buffs at
times are irritated to find their CDs in the New Age section at record
stores, or their flute circles stereotyped as a mystical gathering of lost
souls.

“It’s not a New Age-y thing where you’re supposed to reach some kind of
alternate consciousness,” Travis said. “Flute circles are a chance to get
together and share the music, to practice together and learn tricks, or find
out, ‘Where’d you get that flute?’ It’s a way to help people learn the
flute, to demystify it for people who want to play the music.”

Some Native American flute makers now pitch them in standard keys so they
can be played with other instruments, but typically they play a five-note
scale that doesn’t exactly match the tones of European art music. The music,
like so much in Native culture, is deeply individualistic.

“The traditional Native American flute will never become wholly
standardized,” says Nakai, in a forum on the Internet. “Learning to play the
Native American flute,” he says, “is not accomplished by reading notations,
tablatures, fingering guides, et cetera, but by playing what is regarded as
one’s other voice.”

Those who love the cedar flute say its voice is unique. Travis told the
story of a friend who visited Colorado’s high desert country with a Native
American who wanted to learn more about the flute.

“He said it was just beautiful out there,” he said. “He started playing, and
this crow landed and started talking back. He played some more, and the crow
left. He said, ‘I’m sorry he left.’ And the Native American said, ‘Oh, he’s
gone to get his wife.’ And almost five minutes later, there came two crows
back."

A Native American flute circle meets regularly on the campus of the University of Illinois at Springfield. For details, call Travis at 546-2009. The International Native American Flute Association has a Web site at www.worldflutes.com, and Nakai shares his views at flute maker Ken Light’s Amon Olorin site at http://www.aoflutes.com.

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