Sheila, I just love your magazine as much as ever.
A favourite thing of ours to do both at home and down south is play our Native American flutes.
They are quite simply wooden sticks with holes in them, no reeds or moving keys. They only use fingers and breath, and we even know someone with several missing fingers who plays an adapted-for-him flute.
Our flutes have six holes, and have a five note pentatonic scale, but the most interesting thing about them, aside from their simplicity, is that you can learn to play them quickly and easily, even when you don’t read a note of written music. You learn to play them intuitively by ear.
And of course in a small space like an RV or park model trailer, they don’t take up much room, are easily portable, don’t break easily, and you might even find folks who want to join you, or accompany you with a guitar or other western style instrument.
Down in the US there are groups of like-minded folks all enjoying these flutes, and these players form flute circles that usually meet once monthly to play music and learn and share the gift with each other.
Googling Native American Flute will find you many, many different makers and styles.
R. Carlos Nakai was one of the earliest, in the 1970s or so, to bring back this originally Native American Indian Courting Flute to modern day use and popularity. ~ Lary Hansen & Diana Holmes, dilary2@shaw.ca
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