>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
[ Pause ]   >> As many of you know,
our Homegrown Concerts are our opportunity at the Library
of Congress to create a new collection of the best
of traditional arts and culture.
And we feature different states, and we work with the state folklorist
or the state arts councils in each of the states
that we bring artists here to perform.
And so for this particular performance we have been working
with the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
And we are featuring, as many of you know --
I know that's why you are here --
R. Carlos Nakai, who is one of the foremost, if not the foremost,
Native American flute players' master musicians in the world.
And so we are very, very excited to have him here today.
So in order to introduce him and to tell you a little bit about him,
I wanted to turn the podium over to Jennifer Sugiyama,
who is from the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
Please welcome Jennifer.   [ Applause ]
>> Jennifer Sugiyama: Hello,
and thank you for joining us this afternoon.
I am Jennifer Sugiyama.
I am the Director of Strategic Partnerships here
at Arizona Commission of the Arts.
I would like to thank Peggy Bollinger and Thea Austin
and their team here at the American Folklife Center for inviting us
to participate in their Homegrown Concert Series.
It really is an honor for us.
The Arizona Commission on the Arts is currently one of 56 state
and jurisdictional arts agencies.
Its funding is directed to programs that contribute to the growth
and stabilization of the arts, impacts student learning, nurture
and develop artists' crafts and skills,
preserves the rich traditions of Arizona communities
and encourages participation
of all its citizens regardless of age and ability.
We are one of the few remaining state agencies
that still provides funding for the individual artist.
Most do provide technical support.
And as do we, among other services we provide a curated artist roster.
And R. Carlos -- among his many lists of achievements --
was many years ago an Arizona Commission
on the Arts roster artist, which is of course a point of pride for us.
So when Thea called to ask for nominations
for this Homegrown Concert Series, R. Carlos quickly came to mind.
So I was pleased to be able to offer that to him --
continued technical support.
And it has been said that to know oneself, you must understand
where you are from -- which, of course,
can help us navigate the future.
And R. Carlos, with his music, honors his past,
is rooted in his artistic process and is carving a future
with his exploration of the musical intersections
of the ethnic and jazz idioms.
Please help me welcome R. Carlos Nakai.
[ Applause ]   [ Music ]
[ Applause ]   >> R. Carlos Nakai: Thank you.
And good afternoon.
The music that I began with belonged to the Kiowa and Comanche people.
And I was given the right, in 1983, to begin performing their music,
which is actually still very much alive
in the contemporary music world of traditional people of North America.
The first song is called A Flute Windsong,
and it belongs to the Nevaquaya family.
And Doc Tate was the last
of the traditional flutists to pass a few years ago.
I asked his nephew, Tom Mauchahty Ware,
who was the other traditional flutist
at the time, "Can I use that song?   Could you please ask your uncle?"
And he said, "Sure."
But he also wanted to meet with me to say,
"How did you learn how to do this?
How did you learn how, the particular sound that you have?
And what created you - or, let's say, enabled you, actually,
to begin working with these instruments?"
I found before that time, when I was released
from active duty, I came home in 1972.
Sat around at home, moping around, wondering what I would do
because I had lost the ability to continue my work on brass to end
up here playing with the national bands of military people
to represent the United States.
And so that ending was like, "What do I do now?"
There were very few people playing these instruments.
Mainly they were visual artists of the Comanche,
Kiowa and Pawnee tribes and - as well as the Cherokees of the West.
Other than that, there were a few people
who were making what are primarily regarded as wall hangers.
In other words, they looked like flutes
but they didn't work that way.
And I thought, "I can't let this instrument disappear
into private collections and museum collections
as material culture items of a now bygone culture."
I have visited in Austria and other places in Europe and Eurasia
and found that there were many flutes in collections.
But many of them weren't noted as to where it came from,
who the maker was -- you know,
all the documentation that's required of private collections.
And I thought, "You know, this is really sad."
There were at the time, of course, "This instrument was made in 1720
and is made out of redwood.   And the going price on it now --
it was created by a Native on the East Coast -- is about $32,000."
And I thought, "No."
These instruments belong to a people.
They are continuing now in their active form because I thought,
"This is what we need to do now."
It's a remainder of an older cultural tradition of being oneself.
It's a remainder of, actually, an influence by Austrian and Polish
and Bavarian whistle makers who came to this country
and left behind the offal of their processes
to bring back the perfect instruments
that they could use in pipe organs.
And we have taken it -- an instrument of influence --
and turned it into our own.   Culture goes on.
It's not static.
Culture continues to be maintained by influence.
Even as all of us in this room as Native Americans,
we came from many different cultures,
but look at what we have here today --
a great culture that people attempt to emulate
by wearing maybe a Hard Rocks tee shirt
or a New York Yankees ball cap.   But it's more than that.
It's in here.
And you have to be born in this land in order to know what we are.
And the amalgam of our multiculturalism you see every day.
When I go out later to eat down in Dupont Circle, I'll be allowed
to visit all the different kinds of restaurants.
And what am I going to eat tonight?   I don't know.
I'll know when I get there.
Culture change is important, because it allows us
to really become whom we are and to also recognize that - even like,
for myself, I am a Ute, I am a Southern Athabaskan,
I am a A:shiwi or what they call Zuni.
And I am also a Northern Spaniard Celt.
And that was all very helpful because I just returned
from Morocco, too, and I found the very same culture over there.
And I was like, "Wow!   This is neat."
It all started, I think, with this very simple hunting whistle.
This one is made out of silver.
I don't have the other ones here with me, but it was used
to call game, just like hunting whistles are used today.
[ Hunting whistle ]
So you could emulate the sound of various kinds of game animals,
food animals -- or just sit out there
and call and see what comes in.
I would travel to different places early on, and people --
especially in Kansas -- would say, "Bring your flutes.
We want you to play in the evening."   And they didn't want to hear these.
They just wanted to hear this little whistle.
It's a hunting implement, not a sacred instrument.
The Sun Dance whistles made - are made in such a way that they point
to the ground, and then they are highly decorated.
This one points upward, and it's made in such a way
that it has an end hole, so I can change pitches.
And they said, "Our grandfathers used to talk
about how they heard the sound of melodies on this whistle."
It might have sounded like this.   [ Music ]
So -- simple little whistle.   [ Applause ]
Many of the songs, of course --   [ Pause ]
-- come from the vocal music tradition.
And in the vocal music tradition, of course, we had no written languages.
And of the remaining 180 American Indian languages today from more
than 400 way back at the time of, they say, discovery,
there still aren't any written languages.
There are dictionaries of how to learn a Native language, let's say.
Oh! Here's a good one.
You go to Navajo Community College in Tsaile, Arizona.
And a man named Irvy Goossen used to teach the Navajo language,
which is a form of Athabaskan.   [ Talking in Navajo language ]
They say, "I am learning Navajo."   And they would say:
[ Talking in Navajo language ]
And that's the only phrase you learned after a whole semester
of trying to learn Navajo.   [Laughter ]
.   [ Talking in Navajo language ]
"Who are you?   Who are you?"
And then with the Hopi Navajo, it's:   [ Talking in Hopi Navajo language ]
You know. So a whole semester, I forget how much it was --
$200 or something to learn that.
And you get a nice thick book, and that's all you know.
[ Laughter ]   .
So anyway, the languages are still passed down by word of mouth.
And you sit with an elder.   [ Chanting in Navajo language ]
"You know why I am teaching you this song?
Well, long time ago -- " And so you learn a whole series of chants.
And sometimes if you are a good enough student,
then they'll turn you into what they call a medicine man.
But actually they are called historians.
And they render this long story, or this long history
of how we became human beings, you know, at certain times of the year,
either for healing purposes - so they were actually psychologists,
just like psychologists work today to remind you
of how you are as a human.   You know.
[ Chanting in Navajo language ]   Now that part is really important.
You have got to make sure you get it just right,
because it tells a story.
So as we say when you lose your way as a Native person, you go back home
and you find a historian, and then they remind you of all the suffering
and travail we have gone through to be where we are today.
You know? So there are no nice stories in any of that.
[ Laughter ]
Once in awhile they would make journeys,
though, into places down south.
Right now we are having a war about a border.
But I haven't seen a dotted line, you know.
I live in Tucson, and 72 miles away to the south there is supposed
to be a dotted line on the ground.
But the rest of my culture down there -- the Crows, the Comanches,
Kiowas -- you know, the Tajuna Atan [assumed spelling], the Yoeme
and others, you know, we travel - we used to be able to travel freely
across that dotted line, wherever it was.
And many of the tribes used to go down there to visit with the
"little people," they called them, down in Copper Canyon.
And then we would come back and say, "Wow!
We met with our relatives down there.
And So-and-so is doing really well," and this and that.
And then we would make up songs, like this one, about those journeys.
[ Music ]   [ Applause ]
Now let's see.   Where do I go from here?
OK. Each of these songs are supposed to be played four times through.
We'd be here until 7 or 8.   [ Laughter ]
For those getting back to work, you know,
"Well he played five songs, and that was it.
But they were really long, you know."
[ Laughter ]   And ceremonies are like that, too.
You can sit for five or eight days, you know.
And you go, "God.   When's this thing going to be over?"
So they called on the flutist.
"In the middle of this ceremony there is a song.
I really love that song.
Can you find a way to play it on your flute?"
"Mm, let me see."   [ Singing in Navajo language ]
"Yeah, I think I can."
Each of the tribes have their own sound of flute,
so they are all actually in modes.
So if you are talking about disciplined music
in the Southern Plains people -- Texas, Oklahoma, Southern Arizona,
Southern New Mexico, parts of Arkansas --
all of them sang very low.
And this - the flutes kind of sounded a little high.
And then with the Central Plains people and the woodlands tribes,
you know, and even many of the tribes here
in this area, they sing high.   [ Singing in Native language ]
[ Music ]   Low-sounding flute.
Who knows?
They say this is the first flute song.
[ Music ]   [ Applause ]
This one is a bird effigy flute, and it has a carving on the end
that doesn't affect the pitch or anything at all, of a common loon.
And then on the air-directing mechanism up here, again,
is the same common loon and all the other decorations.
So this one actually plays in the key of E major or F-sharp minor,
which is a mode of the C-minor key.
And it has these effigies because there is a story connected
with one - how the flute came to the people
and why they put the common loon on the end.
And that would take about half an hour to tell
because there are all kinds of side stories.
So I just say it was punishment for somebody
who thought they were better than others.
And so now it's on this flute, and we play music through it.
There are many different stories about how this came,
but the influence has also affected other people.
Because soon afterwards, when the migration became even more present
-- people were coming over more and more in droves --
then the adage, "Go West, young man," started.
And people began moving out into the West.
Some were young people who deserted family, friends and everything
and said, "I need to find something new
and different to do with my life."
They came back to Boston and New York and other areas,
and broadsides stuck up on the wall would tell stories that --
early newspapers -- of these young people who came back dressed
like animals; and they were very unkempt
and they kind of smelled funny.
But they had great stories of being out on the plains and in the woods
and in the Rockies, living with Native people --
which were fantastic, mythic, mythological stories maybe.
But that mixing and blending of their own concepts of being
in the world and what they had gleaned
from Native people also turned into flute melodies.
And these you will hear at what are called rendezvous today.
And sometimes you will hear them at powwows, too,
which are actually things that started in 1930.
So this is called an Omaha song, and it's actually a blend
of a Anglican chant and a Native song at the same time.
[ Pause ]   [ Music ]
[ Applause ]   Get the information out.
[ Pause ]
For the woodlands people, when they were moved out onto the plains,
they adapted to the changes in their own environment.
They were primarily agrarian in nature
and finding things as also gatherers.
They learned to farm, a little bit, wild rice.
When the Egyptians brought corn to North America, then they learned how
to grow that and other kinds of wild grains and foodstuffs
that were common to the area around the Great Lakes in the old days.
Of course now there are Circle K's everywhere, you know.
[ Laughter ]
They also brought their way of being out onto the plains --
the Lakota for one, the Gakota [assumed spelling] and others --
and learned from the normal plains-dwelling people how
to be out there.
We regard them today as probably the most highly spiritual culture
of indigenous North American peoples, because they had a way
about being in toto with the environment and things that moved
about in it and putting humans in a particular spot
within this whole panoply of sacredness around them.
One of the songs talks about what we call "all life."
They call it "Wah-kon-dah" [assumed spelling].
It's like something that we can never understand,
but it's everywhere.
It's - and I think in - as a scientist myself, I always dwell
on this idea about what God is, and I think I have found the answer.
I was sitting one time with my chart,
the periodic table of the elements.
I was looking down at it and sitting there having breakfast.
And I realized, "Wait a minute.   This is a picture of God itself.
Because they say we are the center.
Everyone is the center of their own being, their own awareness.
And everything surrounds you.
But all that surrounds you is also influenced by other things
that surround you, and suddenly they become one."
And I thought, "Hm.   The atomic figure.
And then it becomes a compound wherein it is acted upon
by other elements.
Ah!" And like a human being, we are made up of a number
of those basic elements, but we seem to exude this energy.
And I thought, "Well, there it is, right there -- my friend, God."
And so this is a song for Wah-kon-dah.
[ Pause ]   [ Music ]
[ Applause ]
So as you are watching me, I am still working
with this instrument as opposed to this one.
[ Music ]   Higher pitch.
[ Music ]
Great Lakes, Central Plains, Southern Plains --
it really is a number of different tribes from the Rocky Mountains
and other places all using this --   [ Music ]
-- for hunting.
Just like you use a duck call today or coyote call
or a mountain lion call, you know --
what you get at the sportsman's shop.
We had to make our own.
We hunt, making food out of many of the things around us.
Sometimes we have to cry about those things, like the deer and the elk
and other large game animals,
because like us they give their lives so that we can stay alive.
When I hunt, after I have gotten the animal down then I have to go
and sing a little prayer into its ear.
And it'll be laying there watching me just before it leaves.
And then once in awhile I have to get down, if it's still breathing,
and breathe in its last breaths.
So it becomes me, and I become a part
of that life that's ebbing away.   And then I just have to thank it.
Because one day I will feed everything that surrounds me.
And so, you know, it's sort of a give-and-take relationship.
An Elk Dreamer's song:   [ Pause ]
[ Music ]   [ Applause ]
In my own journey, I have found that there are many different tunings
to many of these flutes, and there isn't one standard.
Even today in the modern world, there have been Native Americans
who have taken up the flute way as one of their methods
to realize that, "Yes, I once was German,
English, French, Dutch, whatever.
But I was born here in Chicago and Boston and New York and Los Angeles,
and I am a native of this land now.
But all I know is where I came from, and not very much at all.
How do I identify with being here?"
Well one of the ways, play your soul.
There is a huge hole in all of the Americans' awareness
of not having a history that we are -
they used to sell this thing called the melting pot theory, you know,
at one time, but it doesn't work anymore.
Because we are still whom we are, but our families have mixed
and blended to become a multicultural family today
of many different communities
and philosophies all at once in one home.
And then when you pick this up, then you begin
to assume the indigenous part.
And then many have found that, "Oh, wait a minute.
My family never talked about this,
but my sister told me our grandmother was actually part
Native person."
I say, "Well you go home, and you find out.
And if there is a roll number, make sure you get it
because you are eligible for some stuff from the government, too."
[ Laughter ]
Well, it's being able to identify with being here now.
This is probably the largest multicultural society on the planet.
Next to us is Morocco, of course.
And I also found that I was influenced early on and wanting
to play in symphony orchestras and be a musician and maybe even play
with the national, you know, military bands here in DC.
But nobody told me that trumpet players, you have to die
and then a new one will fill that spot.
But there are no, like, "We'll hire you next week," you know.
"Oh yeah. You have been to all the music schools?"
"Of course."   "Well you are really good.
We'll get rid of this old guy, and you'll be there."
It doesn't work that way.
You die in office, and then you are replaced by some young person.
So I'd probably still be waiting.   [ Laughter ]
When I lost the ability to play brass because of an accident
in the military, I also found that I had a whole school
of influence behind me called the Western European music discipline,
working with the piano, creating harmonies.
Because most Natives don't play in harmonies or sing
in harmonies; it's all in unison.   And we don't use, you know,
drums and all that kind of thing extensively.
It's just only on occasion.
But I wanted to understand that particular philosophy
of music production, also because one of the great music schools here
in this country said American Indians have no music culture.
And I thought, "That's not true at all."
I took my discipline, began to figure out all
of the instruments from different tribes.
They may sound differently,
but if you are a musicologist you can figure
out what their tunings are because many of them have six holes.
Oh! You know, like a basic flute.
And then of course, little one-hole tubes, they also have pitches too.
And I thought, "Hm."
I developed the tablature system based on the key of E,
because the majority of Native musics in the Central Plains area,
this is the lowest tuned traditional flute.
And it works, you know.   [ Music ]
Just like any other flute instrument going straight
up and down its scale.
And then there are in-between alternate fingering patterns
and pitches.   And I thought, "Wait a minute."
Sit down at the piano, sit down at a tuner.
And I got down scales and found that there are modes.
And I said, "Let me write A scale and use it as my basic tablature
to write music for any pitch tuning of flute."
So it's real simple.
And I did it because the majority of people
who play these instruments are not trained musicians.
Everyone should do art -- everyone.   And so I thought, "OK.
We'll give them an opportunity,
and we'll show them something very simple.
And that will allow them to play immediately rather
than spending years like I have done
and others have done going to music school.
And then you get out.   You know, you can play.
It's what's written on the paper, see."
But you couldn't just pick up something and, "Oh,
I really like the sound of canyons."   Canyon.
[ Pause ]   [ Music ]
So then came that process.
Working with an effects unit, now all the canyons that I've been
to in the world are in this little box.
And I can improvise, which is the hardest thing to do which -
with my training as a brass technician,
I can pick up any three-valve, four-valve brass instruments
and stand there and go, "Well I'd really like to play
with your jazz group, but I don't know what to do.
I have to listen to what you are playing and go home and write it
down on paper, write some solos, and I'll see you next week."
"Mm. You've got to play now."   And I thought, "Wait a minute."
I picked these up, and it was like immediately I could improvise
because I was hearing pitches rather than reading pitches on the paper.
And it was neat.
I play a piece -- which I played here one time --
called A Two World Concerto -- which was, I would say,
the first real piece of music for symphony orchestra that was written
by Dr. James DeMars of ASU for the Native flute specifically.
And it sounds like this in the beginning of the second movement.
It's called Lake That Speaks, and it is based on his homeland
in Minnesota, where he used to fish with his Gramps.
And this is the opening - part of the opening cadenza as I read it.
[ Music ]   [ Applause ]
And where I held that pitch -- it's actually C-sharp - or actually A --
that's where the cellos come in.   And then they answer my call.
And then after that the whole orchestra takes off.
And it's a wonderful piece of music specifically written
for this instrument.   It's the first one of its kind.
Since that time James Hook has written a piece in six movements
for Native American flute.   And I love both of these pieces.
Every time I play them it's like, you know, "Wow!"
[ Pause ]   A new language for me.
A new way to allow other musicians, composers, to look at the flutes
and say, "I think I can write something.
How do I do it?"
Easy. I have a pitch chart, and it shows you the tablature.
But it also shows you how you take the actual pitch
and move it down into the tablature.   And it's actually very simple.
[ Pause ]   And I am looking for it.
But I can't find it.   [ Pause ]
D-sharp.   [ Pause ]
[ Music ]   [ Applause ]
OK. That one is a Polynesian melody called Wal-la-lepo
[assumed spelling].
And while researching the origins of many of the tribes of North America,
I found that many came out of Polynesia,
wandered onto the land way down near Tierra del Fuego and came northward.
And in all of that, of course, the instruments --
other than the nose flutes, which are like this --
will also play that music.
And so much of the traditions and the ways of being in the world
from that cultural community are also a part of these up here, too.
So the research I have been doing besides trying to keep these
in the active music world of our culture here in America is also
to find the diversity of origins
that American Indians also came from.
And it's really interesting, because the works of the Pueblo people
of New Mexico is the same as the works in Peru and Ecuador and out
down into Southern Polynesia.
The works of the silver, of course: Morocco, Spain, France.
The Vikings, a great trading culture who traveled all over the world.
And then the Chinese who, again, left behind great ships made
out of teak which were sunk at certain landings
because they just couldn't come ashore too well.
And so as the tide changed, the ships sank.
But they left behind their sailors -- hm --
and some of the children of the concubines who were on those ships.
And so they have become a part of us.
So that's where the gene of Asia comes from.
And there is also the gene of the Neanderthal in all of us.
So anyway, that's my presentation this afternoon.
And I know a lot of you have to get back to work.
But thank you very much to the Library of Congress and to everyone
for inviting me here and and for you to be here with my presentation.
I'll be doing another one this evening at the Kennedy Center.
And if you have any questions,
I can field them right here onstage before you have to rush right back
to that lovely office you work in.
And then I'll be available to sign CDs out in the lobby.
Thank you.   [ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.   [ Silence to end ]