Flute Tradition
Returns With The Spring
Once A Part Of Daily Life, Practice Nearly Faded Away
Standing
Rock - Dawn hit the Land of Sky and Wind, the Land of Standing Rock,
and bathed the ancient prairie steppe with warm sweet light that
turned last year's grass gold despite the cold silence of winter.
The frozen air seemed to shatter with each mile I drove. Aside from
my car, I imagine that the morning of the first spring must have
been much like this. The cold and quiet was so sharp I could imagine
a knife scraping along the backs of my exposed hands.
I pulled up to Solen High School on the Standing Rock Sioux
Indian Reservation. My passenger Rich Dubé, a personal friend
of my Leki (uncle) and Waunpekiyapi (teacher) Kevin
Locke, and I swapped stories about the gift of iyothanka (the
flute), where it came from, when it appeared on the steppe of the
Northern Great Plains, and its growing revival.
Rich Dubé, came down from the great snows of Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan to conduct a flute workshop in four of the schools
on the reservation. I visited with Dubé the evening before.
When I heard he was from Saskatoon, and was coming down to the Land
of Sky and Wind, I prejudged who I thought I'd be meeting. Kevin
raved about Dubé's knowledge in the reconstruction of the
traditional flute, how they were made, the original sound, and that
Dubé even wrote his Masters thesis around the flute.
Naturally, I thought Dubé was going to be a member of
the White Cap Dakota Nation who reside on a reserve just south of
Saskatoon. Not that skin color matters but I was expecting to meet
a native man. Who met me instead, and broke my prejudice, was an
impeccable skinny white guy. He seemed used to native scrutiny however
and graciously anticipated and answered my probing questions, which
eased my mental lockjaw. I backed off when I was satisfied that
he knew what he was about.
Dubé is a music teacher. His story with the native flute
begins about ten years ago in Saskatoon. He was teaching native
youth in an inner city music program. Dubé had never heard
of the native flute until he attended a session for choir teachers
and he leafed through a book by Bryan Burton called Voices of the
Wind which had native flute songs transcribed for the recorder.
He was looking for something to capture the interest and inspire
his senior kids and thought the native flute would be much more
appealing to his students than just trying to play the songs on
a recorder, a western European instrument.
The music teacher searched the internet looking for flute makers,
and experimenting with various flute kits, discarding those that
didn't seem to have a true sound to his sharp ears. Eventually,
Dubé crossed paths with Kevin Locke. Kevin sent Dubé
the schematics of one of his great-grandfather's flutes. Dubé
seized the opportunity to reconstruct not just a traditional flute,
but a traditional flute with the original sound.
Dubé created a cast using the original traditional flute
from Kevin's schematics. Dubé wanted to create a flute that
was easily constructed and mass produced yet true to the original
sound. In the end, his experiments found success in a custom size
ABS plastic flute matching the exact sound of the original one-hundred
twenty-year-old flute.
I entered the high school and remembered my days when my team
played the Solen Sioux. There was the typical small town pride in
the class B team that represented the best hopes of the community,
and like any small town, the team was fiercely held high in respect.
Putting the games of yesteryear firmly in the back of my head I
made my way down the hall towards the gym where Dubé was
preparing his workshop.
Dubé's luggage was opened up on the bleachers and inside
it was as though he had brought an entire workshop. Someone had
set up some tables and Dubé was quick to set drills, tools
and all his accoutrements out for the workshop. In the span of twenty
minutes he trained staff and volunteers in preparation for students
to drill the holes of their flutes.
Kevin arrived about fifteen minutes after we got to the school.
Students were quietly milling about in the halls in eager anticipation
of the morning's project. A few had poked their heads into the gym
to watch Dubé set up and train the school staff. A teacher,
possibly the principle, cheerfully made some announcements about
lunch and stuff before she gently reminded students to be on their
best behavior for Dubé's flute workshop.
About
fifty-five high school students filed into the gym, arranged by
year, and immediately staked out spots on the basketball court.
The gym quickly filled with echoes of growing chatter which became
a loud buzz with the arrival of fifth and sixth graders from the
nearby community of Cannonball, who took the floor closest to where
Dubé was set up.
The principle made a few announcements reiterating students
to be on their best behavior and extended a welcome on behalf of
the schools and introduced Kevin. Kevin introduced Dubé who
shared some technical things about the flute and what to be expected
in the workshop, and the students listened as best as students could
while they itched to get to the construction.
Dubé divided the large group into three and subdivided
each of those into three at each table. From the time of Dubé's
beginning instructions to the last student drilling the last hole
in the last flute and the last student assembling the various pieces
into a replica of the Lakota Grandfather flute, about forty minutes
had passed. At one point in the assembly Kevin remarked, "Rich is
really organized," a sentiment which was repeated by high school
staff.
When
the last flute was put together, Dubé called for the students
to gather together once again on the basketball court where he offered
some basic flute instruction. It was this instruction that Dubé's
experience as music teacher came out. When the students were quieted
with their flutes and ready to play, Dubé played a few simple
songs with the students who echoed his rendition of the old English
tune "Hot Cross Buns." The fifth and sixth grade students were quite
familiar with playing the song on their recorders and followed Dubé's
instruction swiftly.
After Dubé's crash course in flute basics, Kevin stepped
in and shared a few flute songs, one of which was the Flag song
which the students recognized right away. The students had grown
tired of the floor towards the end of the workshop and took to the
bleachers on the other side of the gym after the song. There, Kevin
shared the story of the first flute. He played the first flute song
as part the story, and sang the song at the end.
One of the things that Kevin shared, a traditional belief,
was that the Dakota and Lakota people are people of the wind. On
the tips of ones fingers are what we call fingerprints. We all have
fingerprints. For the Dakota and Lakota people however, fingerprints
are more than something that identifies and/or incriminates a person,
they say that the patterns tell one which direction the winds were
blowing on the day of one's birth.
In the days of warriors and legend, the flute was played by
young men in traditional courtship, to win the heart of a particular
young woman. A young man might sit outside the lodge of a young
woman and serenade her. If he was successful, she might contrive
an excuse to fetch water or gather additional firewood to spend
a few moments with a suitor.
The flute was a daily part of life. Early American Western artists
like Seth Eastman and George Catlin painted scenes of young men
playing the flute. When the post reservation era began, traditional
courtship faded and was nearly forgotten.
In the 1970s, Kevin Locke took up the flute and learned about
the tradition from men like Richard Fool Bull, William Horn Cloud,
Joseph Rockboy, Asa Primeaux, Henry Crow Dog, Bill Black Lance,
Charles Wise Spirit and Pete Looking Horse among many others. At
a wacipi, Locke saw Richard Fool Bull's display of flutes and remarked,
"Someone should learn this tradition," to which Fool Bull said,
"Maybe you should." And Kevin did.
Locke hopes to pass on the flute tradition to the today's generation.
Dubé's flute workshop fits snugly into the world of the young
native student. An individual can construct a flute with traditional
specs and a faithful sound and be finished in five minutes using
Dubé's kit. In a world where studies come first, where extracurricular
activities play a large role in a student's life and where popular
media influences style and dress, there's still time and place for
dancers and singers to hit the pow-wow circuit.
In the Land of Sky and Wind the wind is a constant presence.
The people of Standing Rock are people of the stars. They are people
of the wind. Maybe the flute tradition will work itself back into
the daily lives of the people as it once did.
Visit Kevin Locke online at Kevin
Locke.
Visit Rich Dubé at Northern
Spirit Flutes.
The
First Scout
Hau mitakuyapi. Mita iawapi kin ehanna wicohan oyaka. Hello my friends
and relatives. This is my blog of history.
http://thefirstscout.blogspot.com/
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