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Flute History
Traditionally the flute was used by different cultures for different things. The Plains
Indians used the flute for courtship. Once the woman had been successfully wooed, the
flute was usually put away, its purpose served. In my culture, the flute was used as a
form of meditation. It would be taken someplace quiet and one would just play to empty
oneself. I still often use it that a way. It works because we human beings are problem
solvers, and the flute gives the problem solving part of our brain something to occupy
itself with so that the other part can be freed up to soar with the melody. My assistant
often jokes that it enables you to get the benefits of meditation without the discipline.
However the flute is used-for performance, for pleasure, for courtship or for meditation-
the Native American flute has a beautiful and haunting quality about it. This is because
it naturally has a pentatonic scale which makes it sound different from instruments that
have their roots in the European culture. It is not an instrument that has to be learned.
You don't have to be able to read music or know about keys--I don't--to be able to play
your own music and find your own song. This is true of all Native American flutes. However,
not all flutes sound alike.
There are three major things that affect the sound of a flute. The first is construction
type. The flutes that we make are Woodlands style flutes, based on a design passed down
through my family for four generations. They differ from Plains style flutes in that they
have no gasket and, therefore, have to my ear a sweeter and less reedy sound. A blind
Comanche woman who has been playing a Plains style flute from her own heritage for years
recently bought one of my flutes and sent me a letter. In it she was able to provide me,
perhaps due to her greater reliance on hearing, with the most insightful description of
the difference between the sound of the two types of flutes. She said that the sound of
my flute was like the Woodlands themselves, full of depth, shadow and nuance. While, to
her ear, the voice of her Plains flute was starker, more of a shadowless, flat open
landscape, like the Plains themselves.
The second thing that affects the sound of a flute is the type of wood that it is made
from. Due to my personal beliefs, I am passionate about the environment. Therefore, I use
only American woods to make the flutes, and I make it a practice to use as much salvaged
wood as possible. For example, all of the Chestnut that I use comes from an old schoolhouse
I bought and tore down to keep it from being burnt, and the wood is over 100 years old. I
use a wide variety of fruit and nut trees, as well as Poplar and Eastern Red Cedar, to make
flutes. I am fortunate to live in Southern Appalachia where all of these different woods
grow. In addition, many of the woods that other flute makers sell for a little more money
as exotic because they are not available in their region, such as figured and spalted
maples, are common here. Therefore, all of our basic flutes are priced the same. Each type
of wood has a subtly different voice, although, as a general rule, the hard woods tend to
be mellower and more subdued while the soft woods are a little brighter and more resonant.
No one wood stands out above the others; if it did, I would not make flutes from as many
woods as I do.
The third thing that affects the sound of the flute is craftsmanship. In his time, my
grandfather was a fine flute maker. But due to the limitations of trying to make something
perfectly round-both inside and out-with a pocket knife and river stones for sanding, there
were many inconsistencies between one flute and the next. Of every five flutes that he
made, all would play well, but he was lucky if two sang. I used to make all of my flutes
completely by hand, just like my grandfather and his grandfather before him. However, I
now combine the old methods with the use of modern equipment which allows me to make
consistently beautiful sounding instruments and keep up with an ever increasing demand
while keeping the cost of the flute within reach of most people.
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