As internet sales and streaming platforms require ever stricter music categorization, the latest offering from Las Cruces-based musician C.S. Fuqua refuses to be pigeonholed. His new album Mandostopheles combines traditional and modern music styles and instruments to create a fresh sound Fuqua says is best described as world jazz fusion.
“These songs are meant to stand on their on rather than exist as components of a channel where each song sounds similar in some way to all the others,” Fuqua explains. “Some of the tunes blend Americana, bluegrass, and jazz, while others world, ethnic, and rock. They’re music, pretty good music, for listeners to either like or dislike based on their own personal musical preference, not some algorithm or corporate hooligan’s focus on dollar signs.”
Mandostopheles, like his previous albums, utilizes various ethnic instruments from around the world, primarily the Native American Flute. “The native flute has such a soulful sound, both as a solo instrument and accompanying instrument,” Fuqua says. “The flute adds an ethereal element to these songs that’s familiar yet brand new and exciting.”
Mandostopheles is Fuqua’s eleventh album in a series featuring seven solo native flute albums and four multi-instrument world jazz albums. Fuqua utilizes native flutes he has custom-crafted. He is the author of Native American Flute ~ A Comprehensive Guide ~ Craft & History as well numerous other books, with work forthcoming from Tuxtails Publishing and Flick-It-Books in 2024. Two albums are slated for 2024 release as well.
For more information regarding Fuqua’s music and books, please visit http://csfuqua.com. To preview Mandostopheles and his other albums, please visit http://csfuqua.bandcamp.com. His music is available on most sales and streaming platforms such as iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and Pandora. Fuqua is available for performance and educational presentations.
Announcing simultaneous publication of two books, The Bridge and Politics. In late 2021, it became necessary to place all work on hold throughout 2022. I have now returned to those projects, which means more will appear in a shorter time than usual, beginning with these two collections, but I will not inundate you with emails. I hope you find the completed projects interesting and relatable.
The Bridge and Politics collect new and previously published poems that present the stories of life’s common and extraordinary experiences we share in myriad ways. The books are available through most bookstores in digital and paperback formats, including Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and many others. You can also request your local library to purchase them through distributors such as OverDrive.
In tribute to my best friend and spouse Bonnie, I am currently posting previously published poems to FaceBook (http://facebook.com/c.s.fuqua.author), poems that will be included in an upcoming collection tentatively entitled Bonnie Lynne ~ Real Love Poems, featuring new and collected poems written for and/or inspired by Bonnie over our 5-plus decades together. Other upcoming projects include a tribute album of songs and instrumentals written for Bonnie over the years. I hope you’ll find each project a celebration of and testament to one of the most extraordinary persons ever to grace this planet.
Praise for C.S. Fuqua’s poetry:
C.S. Fuqua’s poetry paints an entire story with a Tom Waits brush. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, google it. ~ Ken S., editor, Spank the Carp literary magazine
With an eye for the particular and ear for the music of life, C.S. Fuqua shares with readers his brave, lyrical view of the human experience. ~ Dr. Wendy Galgan, former editor, Assisi Literary Magazine
… gritty, insightful, humorous, tragic, and celebratory … ~ Jonathan K. Rice, editor, Iodine Poetry Journal
C.S. Fuqua handles the themes of love and death with beautiful simplicity: what else is there to life? ~ Kalyna Review
…thought-provoking and interesting … ~ Suanne Schafer, author, A Different Kind of Fire
…a lasting impression on the reader. ~ Sensawunda
The power of C.S. Fuqua’s poetry lies in the relentless chronicling of real people with real sorrow, triumph, regret, and above all the sad beauty of the human experience. Superb poetry. ~ Tony Nesca, Author of About A Girl
Few have as deft a touch as C.S. Fuqua, weaving a complete story in just a few lines—what poetry is supposed to be. ~ Dick Claassen, Author of Sacred Native American Flute
I am grateful for your support of and interest in my work. If you have questions or concerns, please visit my websites (csfuqua.com and csfuqua.bandcamp.com) or write to me directly at fuqua.cs@gmail.com.
I wish you and your loved ones the very best always.
Today, 28 Oct 2024, marks two years since Bonnie’s passing. It feels like two seconds and two decades simultaneously. A short remembrance video has been posted to Facebook and also to Google Drive where it can be viewed by clicking on this link:
It runs about four minutes. I hope you will watch the video to remember and celebrate Bonnie, a most extraordinary and wonderful person. A second video, about six minutes, is located at:
By the time I met Bonnie at age 15, I’d concluded that people are inherently evil. Having come from a violent childhood environment, I believed that, when others acted with honor and kindness, it testified to their strength to overcome basic nature, whether due to fear of religious or societal reprisal or the development of a higher understanding that people *should* be better than their base instinct. Bonnie, however, maintained everyone is born good, that some choose to commit evil acts, a choice that, over time, corrupts them completely.
Bonnie’s faith in humanity — that we’re more spiritual than carnal — did not waver. She never criticized a person’s religious faith, only a person’s hypocrisy when he or she used the faith to harm others. Bonnie believed that individual consciousness, or the soul, becomes part of a collective consciousness following an individual’s death. Since consciousness is energy and energy is eternal, Bonnie’s supposition is as sound, or perhaps more so since it’s science-based, as any religious doctrine.
Through the years because of Bonnie, my early view of people changed, and I’ve concluded that most of us are born neither good nor evil, that we begin as empty vessels to be filled by experience and choice. I’ve also accepted that some among us are indeed born pure and good and remain so throughout their lives, that those people are what Buddhism calls Bodhisattvas. Such individuals teach and lead others primarily by example, void of coercion and hypocrisy, toward a higher level of existence. I believe Bonnie’s such an individual, a notion she dismissed with a chuckle and blush, though she knew I was serious. You most likely know such a person as well.
Far too soon, these extraordinary and wonderful people are taken — unjustly, unfairly, cruelly — even as the most vile among us continue to thrive. Nevertheless, I now accept what Bonnie always believed and taught by the way she lived, that goodness is inherent in some, attainable by all.
Thank you for watching the video. I hope it triggers good memories and joy.
Tuxtails Publishing has released Structured Madness ~ New Poems in Traditional Formats, my latest collection, featuring modern thematic poems in strictly structured styles. In the 1990s, I began researching the histories and structures of the myriad of poetry formats, both familiar and unfamiliar, from cultures around the world. Most, I found, have a tendency toward dated language and topics. During the COVID pandemic, I decided to challenge myself by crafting poems that combine traditional and modern formats with modern language and themes.
The result is Structured Madness ~ New Poems in Traditional Formats, a collection of 80 previously unpublished poems that explore modern relationships and themes in traditional and modern poetic formats, from the sestina and Shakespearean sonnet to the magic 9, haiku, and luc bat, as well as many others. Below is the book’s preface, explaining the project’s evolution and intent more thoroughly.
The print book is available from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and other online retailers. The eBook is exclusively available from Amazon.com.
My writing and music career spans five decades, producing more than twenty published books and thirteen albums with more on the way. For more information about Tuxtails, please visit http://tuxtailspublishing.com. For more information about my work, please visit http://csfuqua.com and http://csfuqua.bandcamp.com.
Thank you so much for supporting my work. Wishing you the best.
*********
From the Structured Madness Preface:
Like most of my work, Structured Madness is dedicated to the person who has had and continues to have the most profound influence on every aspect of my life, the person who, over the course of our fifty-one-plus years together, has believed in, supported, and encouraged me fully from the start.
I was hesitant to write this book, having toyed with the idea for several years, but, as always, Bonnie encouraged me to tackle the project because she suspected, once begun, I’d enjoy it. And I did, more than any previous writing project except for my first novel, Big Daddy’s Fast-Past Gadget, which was based on one of her ideas. Throughout the writing, we worked in the same room. While I wrote, she crocheted a baby blanket for a friend’s newborn, an afghan for our daughter, a rasta hat for me, and more. I would read to her rough drafts of poems, and she’d demonstrate to me nifty new stitches for particular projects…Is it any wonder I dedicated my work to her…?
…Fifty years of writing professionally.
Newspaper and magazine articles, nonfiction books, novels, short fiction, poetry. Lots of poetry—99.9 percent of that poetry free verse because I, the product of an increasingly chaotic world, wasn’t interested in traditional structure. Who needs antiquated formats with thees and thous clogging lines that sound, at best, contrived? Certainly not I, nor most of my generation of writers. Convention and formality—those are the products and dictates from and for another time. What we—what I—hoped and strived to accomplish was innovation, an unadorned directness in the most succinct form of storytelling, expanding standards by refusing to succumb to them.
At best, I was a naive novice; at worst, I was a pompous, inexperienced twit.
Free verse, despite crafted line breaks and stanzas, sounds a lot like flash and micro fiction when read aloud. In recent years, I’ve wanted to break free of the free verse format, to challenge my abilities, to experiment in style and form without indulging in so-called experimental poetry of the day, to craft a poem that sounds poetic when read aloud. I craved something new but also familiar enough it didn’t scare the bejesus out of me.
Decades ago I received a poster of poetry formats as partial payment for publication of one my poems. The poster’s setup was more like a cryptographic puzzle than a how-to, but it intrigued me enough to begin researching the myriad poetry formats for thorough explanations, histories, and examples of both familiar and unfamiliar styles from cultures around the world. Although the rhyme and meter structures were curiously enticing, many of the examples, including modern, were laden with outdated language, expressions, themes, and topics. If I were to utilize conventional formats, I wanted to wrap them in contemporary language, culture, and topics with the hope of creating something worthy enough of the formats while being entertaining and intriguing enough to please a modern audience.
Whether I’ve achieved that goal is up to you to decide. In any case, I did not want to create an instruction manual. My goal in everything I write is to craft something I hope will entertain and engage readers. If it achieves that, I’m ecstatic. If it achieves more, even better. Perhaps this book will introduce formats with which you aren’t familiar, formats you may want to explore further. Each poem is identified by its format with each format defined in the glossary.
I’ve learned a lot by writing these poems, and I plan to learn more in the coming years by further exploring many of these forms and others I’ve yet to try. Change, a certain woman of wisdom has told me many times, can be a good thing. Even at my age.
On the heels of Mandostopheles comes Killing the Buddha, an eclectic collection of music traditions into what can be best described as World Jazz Fusion. The latest album from Las Cruces-based musician and author C.S. Fuqua relies heavily on music traditions such as Americana, jazz, folk, rock, and ethnic, but the songs individually defy categorization.
“They’re music — pretty good music,” Fuqua says, “for listeners to either like or dislike based on their own personal musical preference, not some algorithm or corporate programmer’s focus on dollar signs.”
Like his previous albums, Killing the Buddha utilizes various ethnic instruments from around the world, especially the Native American flute for its “soulful sound, both as a solo instrument and accompanying instrument,” Fuqua says, “adding an ethereal element that’s familiar yet brand new and exciting.”
The album’s title comes from the Zen koan, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him,” generally interpreted as humanity’s propensity to objectify holy figures, an attempt to reduce enlightenment to an intellectual or philosophical understanding.
“The only assertion the album itself makes,” Fuqua says, “is that music is one of life’s best achievements — a good time for ears and mind.”
Killing the Buddha is Fuqua’s twelfth album. Seven in the series feature solo native flute and five multi-instrument world jazz. Fuqua utilizes native flutes he has custom-crafted. He is the author of Native American Flute ~ A Comprehensive Guide ~ Craft & History as well numerous other books, with work forthcoming from Tuxtails Publishing and Flick-It-Books in 2024, as well as another world jazz album.
For more information on Fuqua’s music and books, visit http://csfuqua.com. To preview Killing the Buddha and his other albums in full, visit http://csfuqua.bandcamp.com. His music is available on most sales and streaming platforms, including iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and Pandora.
To benefit cancer research, the new album Bonnie Lynne ~ A Tribute, world jazz celebrating the life of my spouse Bonnie, debuts 25 May 2023, with all proceeds from csfuqua.bandcamp.com sales to go to cancer research. Bonnie Lynne is an upbeat celebration of Bonnie and all she gave to the world.
To make your money have more impact, donate directly to the cancer research organization of your choice. Then send a receipt showing a donation of $10 or more to fuqua.cs@gmail.com, and I will provide you with a link to download the digital album, along with extras, free.
Bonnie passed on 28 October 2022 after cancer metastasized to her bones and lymph nodes. Doctors assured us the cancer and pain could be managed, but chemotherapy failed and had numerous side effects, and the pain only increased. Nevertheless, Bonnie approached treatment with positivity and optimism even after chemo proved ineffective. While some of the songs on the album were written decades ago, several were written last year as I sat beside the bed as Bonnie rested or napped, playing guitar or flute gently, tunes that evolved into full-fledged songs that reflect Bonnie’s beautiful soul.
Please pitch in to find a cure for cancer either by purchasing this album through http://csfuqua.bandcamp.com or by donating directly to the cancer research organization of your choice. Thank you on behalf of Bonnie, myself, the millions dealing with this horrific disease, and the millions more like you who love them.
Musician and author C.S. Fuqua has taken a slightly different approach with his latest Native American style flute album Homeward ~ WindPoem VII ~ Native American Flute Meditations, combining traditional sound and harmonies with modern structure and percussion.
With popularity centered around its unique and novel sound, the Native American flute has come a long way over the last three decades and is now featured in a variety of music genres and styles, from folk and jazz to orchestral and world. And yet solo instrumental renditions remain the instrument’s most powerful — and perhaps most popular — means of reaching listeners.
Four years have passed since Simplicity,Fuqua’s last WindPoem native flute album. During that time, he produced two albums of multi-instrumental world music incorporating native flute. With Homeward, Fuqua returns to the soulful power of solo native flute that made his first six WindPoem albums favorites among those seeking relaxing, meditative music.
Although a return to the traditional sound of solo flute, Homeward selections are more structured than earlier WindPoem instrumentals.
“I produced this album specifically to create the same type of calm and relaxation as earlier WindPoem recordings but with a more modern, melodic sound,” Fuqua said. “Although the native flute is becoming a familiar instrument in popular music, its traditional solo sound will always be the most soulful and satisfying.”
Erroneously portrayed as a male-dominated instrument used solely for courting, the Native American flute historically has been an instrument played by children, women, and men in a variety of capacities, including spiritual and fertility rites, courting, mourning rituals, basic entertainment, and as an instrument of greeting between individuals and villages. In every role, it has been and remains an instrument whose melody is both haunting and soothing.
Since the first WindPoem album, Fuqua’s native flute instrumentals have been used for casual listening and in settings for counseling, meditation, hospice and general care, and educational environment enhancement.
Homeward builds on the WindPoem tradition of music that is both soothing and entertaining, blending traditional sound deftly with modern form while remaining true to native music traditions.
Fuqua wrote and performed all instrumentals for the album, playing flutes that he custom-crafted. Fuqua is the author of the book Native American Flute ~ A Comprehensive Guide ~ Craft & History. For more information regarding Fuqua’s music and books, please visit http://csfuqua.com. To preview Homeward and other WindPoem albums, please visit http://csfuqua.bandcamp.com or most streaming platforms such as Spotify and Pandora. Fuqua is available for performance and educational presentations. For more information, contact him at fuqua.cs@gmail.com.
Any way you look at it, parenting is rife with challenges and joys. Fatherhood ~ Poems of Parenthood, the latest book by author/musician C.S. Fuqua, published by UK-based Stairwell Books, explores the facets of parenting from a father’s perspective in 90 poems written over a 30-year period.
In 1991, Fuqua became an “at-home dad” charged with the day-to-day care of a newborn daughter. He and his spouse Bonnie were what the media then called a new breed of parents, those who chose not to settle into traditional roles of woman-as-homemaker, man-as-breadwinner. While his wife pursued a career in public service, Fuqua established himself as a freelance writer.
In the lean, early years of marriage, the couple had dismissed the idea of becoming parents, Fuqua said, “because we weren’t ready for parenthood—not monetarily, not intellectually, not emotionally.” By age thirty-five and their thirteenth wedding anniversary, “We’d become financially stable and decided it was time.”
Beginning with two miscarriages, the couple found themselves on an emotional rollercoaster like they’d never experienced before, one that only intensified with the birth of their daughter. “But something magical happened,” Fuqua said. “With most of my time now devoted to her, our daughter became my primary creative muse, and I began to devote much of my writing to the exploration of parenthood—the daily experiences, insecurities, failures, successes.”
Fuqua spent most days caring for the couple’s daughter, playing with her, taking her on exploratory walks, conversing with and reading to her as though she understood every word, involving her in social development situations, and sharing all duties with his spouse in the evenings, on weekends, and her days off—all about which he wrote in poetry, in fiction, and in journal-style letters to their daughter that he continues to write today.
In 2007, Uncial Press published a collection of 38 of Fuqua’s parenting-related poems entitled The Swing ~ Poems of Parenthood, which won the Best Poetry Collection EPIC Award for 2008 and remained in print for the next fourteen years. In 2021, Fuqua decided to expand the collection with poems he’d written since its publication, more than doubling the number of The Swing’s original poems, all of which are included in Fatherhood.
Fatherhood chronicles 30 years of parenting experiences, from pregnancy to the child’s adulthood—the joy, sorrow, insecurity, confidence, anxiety, calm, irrationality, fear, pride, confusion, clarity, mourning, celebration, hope, and so much more—“all due,” Fuqua said, “to one extraordinary young woman who’s astounded her mom and me from day one with her intellect, humanity, and grace.”
Fuqua has been writing professionally since 1979. His published books include White Trash & Southern ~ Collected Poems, Walking after Midnight ~ Collected Stories, Big Daddy’s Fast-Past Gadget (SF novel), Hush, Puppy! A Southern Fried Tale (children’s book), and Native American Flute ~ A Comprehensive Guide, among others.His short fiction and poetry have appeared in hundreds of national and international publications as diverse as Rattle, The Pearl, Cemetery Dance, The Christian Science Monitor, Main Street Rag, and Year’s Best Horror Stories. Learn more about his writing and music at http://csfuqua.com.
A powerful but tender chronicling of his daughter’s birth and growth by the master of the American Horror genre and exponent of the Native American flute. A reminder that, while we hew our children from granite, we are ourselves shaped and crafted by their love.
Stairwell Books
Fatherhood by CS Fuqua is a lyrical journal of childrearing, from tragedy of miscarriage to a difficult birth through childhood. Fuqua shares the growth and molding of this parent/child relationship, focusing on the joy of watching his daughter become her own person, tinged with the sad knowledge that she will eventually leave home. “When the Bird Has Flown” sums it up nicely: “Rushing through the moments, / the forgettable and the milestones, / sprinting headlong from one / to the next, / and the next, / unaware of loss, / no pause to consider or savor, / centered instead / on what mysteries lie ahead, / always ahead…” Recommended.
M. Scott Douglass, Publisher/Managing Editor The Main Street Rag, author of Just Passing Through (Paycock Press, 2017)
C.S. Fuqua’s latest poetry collection, Fatherhood: Poems onParenthood, is a delightful and emotionally insightful work about the challenges and day-by-day revelations of a father who makes it his vocation to raise a daughter with grace, integrity, and much love. The poems in this volume are tightly crafted, lyrical gems, filled with learned wisdom, wry humor, and humanistic dignity, as this poet/father documents his daughter’s life from infancy to young womanhood, and shares with the reader the glorious journey of his own life lessons, attempting to be a good and nurturing parent.
Davidson Garrett, author of Arias of a Rhapsodic Spirit
C.S Fuqua’s transcendent verses encapsulate the many moods and dispositions of fatherhood. His reflections are compelling, affecting, witty and tender. A recommended read for the expectant father.”
Ali Kinteh, author of The Nepenthe Park Chronicles
There’s a beautifully composed realness that shapes C.S. Fuqua’s poetry. I reveled in his language and storytelling. I want to gift this book to all my friends and family who are new parents, older parents and all future parents, because this is about life and love. It is a layered journey and Fuqua brings us into his unique, somewhat familiar “home” through poetry that we can dwell in.
Laura Kerr, Canadian Artist & Poet
The power of C.S. Fuqua’s poetry lies in the relentless chronicling of real people with real sorrow, triumph, regret, and above all, the sad beauty of the human experience. Superb poetry from American poet and musician, C.S. Fuqua.
Tony Nesca, Author of About A Girl (Screaming Skull Press)
Few have the deft touch for poetry as does C.S. Fuqua. He is not shackled by the bonds of rhyme, but is instead freed by language, each word, each phrase, each sentence weaving a complete story in just a few lines. This is what poetry is supposed to be. Take for example the phrase in the poem “Cabinet”: “…doing her damnedest to reach the bug spray.” In this last phrase of one of his introductory poems we see the oncoming future of Fuqua and his daughter as he devotes his life to keeping her safe. In the poem, “The Chant,” we have the phrase, “She sees skin as a rainbow.” The personality of his daughter is there in that one short phrase. The rest of the words beautifully support, but this one short phrase tells us everything we need to know about his beloved daughter. Sometimes Fuqua reaches for a beautiful image in a full line, like in the poem, “Tokyo Fabric”: “He nods at my daughter, reflecting her grin, the cat purring like soft forest rain, the universe melting under those fingers, that fur, that sound.” Fuqua says he loves poetry because it’s a challenge to write a complete story in a poem. You will read many short stories in Fatherhood.
Dick Claassen, Author of Sacred Native American Flute
Most don’t think of jazz music when someone mentions the Native American flute. The instrument is best known for a sound that’s usually described as ethereal, spiritual, haunting — the traditional allure of the native flute. But tradition is being upended, and artists around the world are blending the Native American flute into a variety of genres, including jazz fusion. As the new album Within the Mystic from musician and author C.S. Fuqua attests, the native flute is gradually becoming known as an instrument for all genres.
Fuqua’s first six albums, WindPoem ~ Native American Flute Meditations I-VI, celebrate the traditional sound of the native flute. On his seventh album, Different Direction, Fuqua began an exploration of the flute’s range, incorporating it into music that combines influences from bluegrass, rock, jazz, and traditional music to create a genre best described as world fusion. Within the Mystic continues to expand the flute’s range, drawing on an eclectic blend of styles and genres to create a sound that is as familiar as it is unique.
Musicians and composers worldwide are increasingly exploring the native flute as far more than an instrument of traditional music. Performers such as Jonny Lipford, R. Carlos Nakai, and the jazz band The Rippingtons have incorporated the flute’s haunting melodies into jazz, rock, blues, and classical compositions. Nakai, while best known for his traditional native flute work, was one of the first innovators of the native flute, collaborating with numerous musicians and composers in a variety of genres. Yet, despite the efforts of these artists, the native flute remains stereotyped.
Fuqua’s Within the Mystic contains twelve cuts of world jazz, with native flute featured as primary instrument in most of the songs. As more artists produce albums featuring the native flute in various genres, the instrument will continue to expand its range and popularity, securing a deserved presence in bands of all genres, creating a multi-cultural celebration for the ears.
Within the Mystic is available for streaming and/or purchase from most major music platforms, including Pandora, Deezer, Amazon.com, iTunes, and Fuqua’s music website http://csfuqua.bandcamp.com where the album can be previewed in its entirety.
Fuqua has researched and published extensively on the history, mythology, and crafting of the Native American flute. He’s the author of the acclaimed A Comprehensive Guide ~ The Native American Flute ~ History & Craft. He released the first WindPoem album in 2014. His WindPoem ~ Infinite album was a finalist in the 2019 New Mexico Music Awards. He is available for presentations on the history and craft of the Native American flute. For more information, please contact him at fuqua.cs@gmail.com or visit http://csfuqua.com and http://csfuqua.bandcamp.com.
I’ve heard such nonsense all my life as relatives, without proof, claimed Native American ancestry. Officially, we’re white, “but we got Indian blood in us from way back.” In 2015, a Pew Research Center study revealed that at least half of all U.S. adults who identify as multiracial are whites claiming Native American ancestry—that’s 8.5 million people. In a 2016 Fusion.net article, Native Peoples magazine editor Taté Walker pointed out the obvious. For that many whites to have Native American ancestry, American Indians would have to be “getting it on with everybody.”
Some claims of native ancestry are legitimate. Most others, not so much—and there’s a name for the people making such erroneous claims: Pretendians.
Claiming native ancestry isn’t new, but white claims of being a quarter or less Native American have skyrocketed in recent years. Asked for proof, those claiming ancestry resort to family lore and physical attributes like high cheekbones. Moreover, these wannabe Indians readily feign extensive knowledge of whatever tribe they claim. They buy, display, and wear stereotypical garb and trinkets as though every Indian in America purchased their clothes and jewelry at some Arizona interstate tourist trap, but these Pretendians have no experience in native culture. Instead, they profess nativeness, especially on social media, by coining outlandish “Indian” names like Howling Wolf Tree, Badger Womyn, and Eagle Feather Heart. (Get your own ridiculous “Indian” handle with the online name generator at http://www.lingerandlook.com/Names/FictionNames2.htm.) If their claims are questioned, Pretendians shore up their authenticity with inaccurate knowledge of Indian culture and history based on popular myth and stereotypes, demonstrating little or no fact-based understanding of past or present native issues. They will even attack true native descendants as imposters to make themselves appear genuine.
A few years ago, a distant relative who’s researched our mutual genealogy put authority to our family’s claim to native heritage, purportedly discovering two Muscogee women in my paternal grandfather’s ancestry. “I’m still working on documenting it, but, after all,” he told me, “we have a great-great-great grandfather who traded with Indians up and down the river.” How trading anything other than a certain bodily fluid gets native genetics into a person’s DNA is beyond my understanding, but the claim, he insisted, was genuine and only needed official confirmation. We could now check with clear conscience those white and Native American ethnicity boxes on job and other applications.
White folks claim native ancestry for a variety of reasons, including a romanticized view of native culture and people. Take the Native American flute as example. It’s an instrument that’s mystical, haunting, spiritual. It touches our ancient soul. According to one of several creation myths, it was given to native men for use in courting women, a fairytale now accepted by most as fact. Besides misogynistic, the myth-as-history is preposterous. In reality, the flute’s place in native culture was and remains broad, from entertainment to courting to fertility rites to greeting visitors—like any other instrument ever made in any other culture. The story, however, fits well into the Pretendian narrative that embraces myths promoted by European invaders, myths designed to undermine native women’s cultural status. Europeans ensured general acceptance of chosen myths-as-history through systematic destruction and replacement of native culture and values with European nonsense now accepted by many Pretendians as fact.
Based on assumed nativeness, Pretendians have even developed a sense of political correctness regarding aspects of their claimed heritage. When I began crafting native flutes some thirty years ago, the instrument was known simply as a Native American flute. In recent years, a movement among mostly Pretendians contends that Native American flutes can be crafted only by Native Americans. If you’re non-native and claim no native ancestry, the flute you make must be termed a Native American style flute. If we accept such skewed logic, then non-Europeans can craft only a recorder style flute, and non-Spaniards can make only Spanish style guitars.
By far, Cherokee is the most claimed of all Native American ancestry. The 2000 U.S. federal census reported that 729,522 Americans claimed Cherokee heritage. By 2010, the number had increased to 819,105, some 70 percent of them—white folks—declaring mixed race. I grew up in southern Alabama and northwest Florida, so this statistic is no surprise. Bring up native culture in conversation, and someone will claim native heritage. Nine out of ten times, that heritage will be Cherokee, usually “traced” to an Indian princess—never mind that no such tribal status ever existed.
Throughout the country’s history since the European invasion, Americans have used mixed-race status for personal advantage. For example, a person with African American and white heritage who looked white would usually pass as white to avoid discrimination as she or he rose in society as only whites could do. Even today, most people who have less than twenty-eight percent African-American ancestry, according to a 2014 23andMe genetics study, claim white-only heritage. Conversely, whites are increasingly quick to claim native ancestry in an effort to gain perceived minority advantages in employment or scholarships. Making the claim is easy. Since 2000, the Census Bureau has allowed people to check multiple boxes for race and ethnicity without proof.
This kind of ethnic multi-checking has created an alternate reality for native heritage. Until recently, tribes determined membership on whether a person spoke the language and followed cultural practices which defined cultural affinity with the tribe. As white claims rose, blood quantum became the standard determinant. If one grandparent, for example, belonged to a tribe but the other three grandparents did not, a person was considered to have one-quarter blood quantum. Before 1963, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians allowed anyone with at least one-thirty-second blood quantum (one great-great-great native grandparent) to join the tribe, but the claim had to be documented. You couldn’t just check a box. After 1963, the standard increased to one-sixteenth.
Before the mid-1800s, the Cherokee were the southeastern U.S.’s most populace tribe, numbering around 16,000. But they had something whites wanted—land for farming and gold mining. And let’s not forget racial prejudice. These were local Indians after all, substandard humans in the European mindset. To appease white desire, the U.S. government in 1838 and 1839 forcibly removed the southern Cherokee to the Indian Territory in what later became Oklahoma. After removal and as tensions rose between north and south in the run-up to the Civil War, whites realized an advantage in claiming Cherokee ancestry, insisting these claimed ancestors had escaped forced removal to hide, remain, and marry in the south. Official records, however, indicate that few, if any, Cherokee escaped removal, although 4,000 died on the Trail of Tears en route to the Indian Territory. Claiming Cherokee ancestry enabled southerners to step out of their role as oppressor by legitimizing themselves as native born rather than of European origin. The claim thereby relieved them of guilt for what they’d done to the actual Cherokee and established a delusional native right to defend their despotic system of slavery from an “aggressive” federal government.
This delusional mindset has had a long shelf life. It’s evident today in southern Pretendians’ defense of the rebel battle flag as heritage not hate and their unyielding support of political candidates who promote xenophobic and racist ideology. Claiming ownership of an imagined native past allows these whites to forgive themselves for their European ancestors’ aggression against native peoples and their own present-day assaults against different cultures, races, and ethnicities.
Claimed ancestry became a political issue in 1924 when Virginia politicians were forced to address matters of mixed-race rights. The state’s Racial Integrity Act at the time banned marriage between whites and members of any other race, defining people as white only if their “blood is entirely white, having no known, demonstrable, or ascertainable admixture of blood of another race.” That put a kink into claims of ancestral links to Pocahontas by prominent white Virginia families. Generationally, if the claims were true, it meant family members were at most one-sixteenth native. The Virginia legislature therefore amended the Racial Integrity Act with the “Pocahontas Exception,” allowing white families to claim native ancestry to Pocahontas but still be classified as white. Conversely, those with one-sixteenth African American ancestry could not claim white status and remained designated as black.
According to Native American journalist Mary Annette Pember, claims to Cherokee ancestry went nationwide during the twentieth century, thanks to Tinsel Town. Hollywood movies made the Cherokee acceptable to people outside the South by civilizing the tribe. In 1971, a popular Keep America Beautiful ad campaign established Iron Eyes Cody, The Crying Indian, as the quintessential image of Native America, a tear rolling down his cheek as he mourned environmental destruction. Cody famously traced his heritage to the Trail of Tears and a Cherokee grandfather who purportedly worked with the Confederate outlaw band, Quantrill’s Raiders. Cody made no personal claim to glory, however, calling himself just another Injun who left the reservation to find success in Hollywood. After he’d portrayed Indians in more than 200 films, the public discovered that Iron Eyes Cody’s heritage did not trace to the Trail of Tears after all, that he’d never lived on a reservation, that he was actually Espera Oscar de Corti, a Louisiana-born actor with 100 percent Sicilian ancestry—not a drop of Indian blood.
The three federally recognized Cherokee tribes—Untied Keetoowa Band, Cherokee Nation, and the Eastern Band of Cherokees—have a combined population of 344,700 members, most living in close-knit communities in eastern Oklahoma and North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains. Although becoming a Pretendian may seem harmless, it has consequences beyond a wink and snicker. In the workplace, whites can be hired based in part on claimed heritage, taking a position that should be filled by someone of true native heritage. Iron Eyes Cody is a good example. His success in playing an Indian prevented true Native Americans from landing roles that should’ve been theirs.
To address increasing claims of ancestry, the Cherokee Nation has created a task force to deal with false assertions by individuals seeking official recognition, leading one investigator to theorize that many Pretendians are simply seeking a sense of place and connection. The problem is, the only way some know how to achieve such connection is to buy it and own it. Heritage is not such a commodity.
Pretendians may be fully sincere in their romanticized nativeview of nature and spirituality. Their appeal vanishes, however, when they use their nativeness to justify or forgive disturbing personal traits. Sociologist Herbert Gans in 1979 coined the phrase symbolic ethnicity to describe the act of white Americans claiming native identity without changing behavior or suffering social consequences. The practice is pervasive, exemplified by Native American heritage clubs that have no members of documented ancestry and by Pretendians claiming heritage for reasons of employment or scholarship benefits. For them, ethnicity is voluntary, a piece of clothing that can be put on or taken off at will, unlike skin.
As America becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, whites unwilling to accept their changing status search for a collective identity of ancestral place and culture to link to the world they live in and to justify personal racism toward other groups. The 2016 presidential election provided a champion for many whites who claim Native American ancestry, encouraging and inflaming racism and xenophobia without regard to decency, empathy, or societal norms. Many Pretendians on social media professed steadfast support for Native Americans protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) while vehemently condemning similar groups such as Black Lives Matter and opposing anti-discrimination legislation designed to protect women, people of color, and LGBTQ individuals.
For all the claims of indigenous blood, ancestry no longer needs to be a mystery. We can easily determine by DNA analysis whether we have native ancestry—which is exactly what I did a few years ago. Forget those two native women in my paternal grandfather’s ancestry, and don’t give the Indian trader a second thought. Thanks to DNA testing, I know the truth. I’m as white as a person gets.
When I informed the relative who’d “discovered” the perceived native ancestry, he replied, “Another genealogist in the family feels strongly there’s Indian blood. So we just have to continue to wonder.”
No, we don’t.
Science is a marvelous thing. It doesn’t depend on faith, myth, or family lore. Science relies solely on empirical evidence—like climate change or gravity. Or DNA analysis.
Never mind high cheekbones.
Ignore hair color or texture.
And Granddaddy? He looks like Granddaddy.
Sources
Bryc, Katarzyna et al. “The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States.” The American Journal of Human Genetics , Volume 96 , Issue 1 , 37 – 53.
Native American flutes have always been known primarily as “love flutes” or “courting flutes” and were generally played for no other reason than courting rituals by a young man serenading his intended bride, although some men played them for their wives as a sign of love.
The above statement—paraphrased from an “authentic” Native American flute history and instrument website—is baloney, indicative of the uninformed, misogynistic belief of many, if not a majority, of modern Native American flute fans, crafters, and musicians. Rather than research and discover the flute’s rich background, they’ve accepted the love flute myth as history—that the flute was developed as a courting tool for men only—while ignoring the instrument’s true background and multitude of uses by native people. When confronted with reality, they respond with claptrap like the following halfwitted comment in an online native flute forum: “Granted, everyone had their own traditions and norms about flutes, and I’m sure someone will jump in here and say ‘oh sure, women have always played flute in my tribe.’ But as a generality women were kind of kept off the business end of a flute.”
Sadly, most Americans of both native and immigrant heritage have been brainwashed to believe certain stereotypes and false “history” of early native life, especially that of native women, stereotypes created by early European invaders and perpetuated in magazines, books, and, later, movies. When the native flute’s popularity surged in the mid-twentieth century, accepted stereotypes did what they do best—smothered the instrument’s true history with nonsense.
Before Europeans landed in the New World, native cultures were matriarchal and celebrated men and women as equals. The mother’s ancestral line, not the father’s, determined a child’s lineage. In community affairs, women became shamans, had the right to vote, could impeach a chief if a majority became dissatisfied with leadership, served in advisory positions, assisted in managing village affairs, spoke in council meetings, had the power to veto war, and even fought in battles themselves. And the flute? Yes, it was as much a woman’s instrument as a man’s.
So why are we saddled with this love flute myth malarkey as history? Gullibility and laziness. While failing to explore fact-based sources, we’ve accepted and internalized the erroneous accounts of American Indian life by European invaders. To undermine native culture, Europeans deftly exaggerated accounts of Native American life and lied about women and their status. They portrayed native women as obedient, subservient to “red devils” who attacked and scalped good Christian explorers whose only goal was to bring patriarchal European civility, social harmony, and redemption to an evil and barbaric world. In reality, Europeans could not cope with the independence, power, and equality of native women compared to the role of European women. So they set about transforming native culture into a crude version of European culture.
Pre-invasion cultures developed a deep connection to their past through stories and music, but that ended in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as Europeans forcibly took native children from their families and sent them to “Indian schools” where teachers required native children to speak only English, wear western-style clothing, and study western-based history rather than preserving native history and heritage through traditional sources and methods. As Europeans forced Native Americans to assimilate into the European, Judeo-Christian lifestyle, the cultural status and equality native women had once enjoyed vanished, and their share in power and authority disintegrated.
Erosion of women’s status extended even to the native flute. The flute had traditionally been a social instrument, used for the sheer joy of making music. Songs and music were like breath itself, an integral part of existence. Native people embraced music to honor the Creator. Shamans utilized music in medical cures. They integrated music into ceremonies to call rain and locate hunting game. Children incorporated music in their games, while adult tribal members included music in vision quests, harvest rituals, war, and death rituals. Although customs and practices differed between cultures, the flute was common to most. Plains Indian tribes could be identified from a distance by the songs they played as they traveled. Members of some tribes played flutes to announce their peaceful approach to a new village. In what’s now the southwestern U.S., the Hopi people not only valued flautists of both genders, they nurtured a flute clan responsible for developing the talents of flautists. Each autumn, a girl and boy, side-by-side, both playing flutes, would lead a procession and ceremony in honor of the gods to ensure good rains and crops. Even today, despite dominance of the love flute myth, Native American flutes are used in ceremonies other than courting rituals, including weddings, worship ceremonies, and political ceremonies.
Many early Europeans noted in their writings that native people used the flute as a social instrument to make a joyful noise. In June, 1528, while exploring the west coast of Florida, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca wrote that “a chief approached, borne on the back of another Indian, and covered with a painted deerskin. A great many people attended him, some walking in advance, playing on flutes of reed.” Had only men been playing, it’s likely the writer would have said so. In 1539, a member of the Hernando de Soto Spanish expedition to Florida wrote that “some Indians arrived to visit their lord, and every day they came out to the road, playing upon flutes, a token among them that they come in peace.” In yet another account, the same writer, describing events in what is now Alabama, wrote “the Cacique came out to receive (de Soto) … and he was surrounded by many attendants playing upon flutes and singing.” Note the writer chose the word “attendants,” not “men.”
In Pueblo country around 1540, Pedro de Castaneda wrote about his travels that “the people came out of the village with signs of joy to welcome Hernando de Alvardo and their captain, and brought with them into the town with drums and pipes something like flutes, of which they have a great many.” Around the same period, Antonio de Mendoza wrote, “The Indians have their dances and songs, with some flutes which have holes on which to put the fingers. They make much noise. They sing in unison with those who play, and those who sing clap their hands in our fashion … five or six play together, and some of the flutes are better than others.” Pedro Fages, writing about an encounter in California in 1769, described a dance for which “only two pairs from each sex are chosen to perform the dance, and two musicians,” presumably of each gender, “who play their flutes.”
Then came the turning point in flute accounts when artist George Catlin in 1832, capturing the European desire to romanticize and diminish native life, described the flute as strictly a courting instrument. Writing about the Plains flute while in Upper Missouri, Catlin said, “In the vicinity of the Upper Mississippi, I often and familiarly heard this instrument, called the Winnebago courting flute, and was credibly informed by traders and others in those regions that the young men of that tribe meet with signal success, oftentimes, in wooing their sweethearts with its simple notes, which they blow for hours together, and from day to day, from the bank of some stream—some favorite rock or log on which they are seated, near to the wigwam which contains the object of their tender passion until her soul is touched, and she responds by some welcome signal, that she is ready to repay the young Orpheus for his pains with the gift of her hand and her heart.”
Europeans latched onto the courting aspect while ignoring that marriage and courtship rites varied from culture to culture, that the courtship period itself could last more than six years, that the girl had the power of choice, that the genealogical line was through the mother’s family, that women were held as equal individuals within the culture, unlike women of Western society, that the flute certainly was not a courting requirement. The flute became an effective tool in the Europeans’ determination to assimilate native peoples and erase native women’s status. The first Europeans to migrate to North America, especially those steeped in Puritan, Catholic, and Quaker Christian traditions, did not tolerate women in prominent positions of government or societal decision-making. Portraying indigenous society as barbaric and the people as savages, Europeans systematically eliminated indigenous women’s power within tribes and clans. Portraying the flute as a man’s-only instrument helped achieve that goal.
In last few decades, native women have begun to regain their rightful places in tribal life. Even female deities and original matriarchal native mythologies have enjoyed a resurgence among many native peoples. A quarter of federally recognized tribes are now chaired by women. In 2014, 147 native women were elected to serve as tribal leaders—26 percent of 566 federally recognized tribes. Female tribal leadership in 2015 decreased slightly to 24.5 percent.
Nevertheless, the resurgence of power doesn’t thrill everyone in the Native American community. Since Wilma Mankiller became the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in 1985, some male candidates in various tribal races have continued to ridicule female opponents as inept, unable, and too female to make the important decisions required of a chief—as if men have proved themselves more qualified than women in anything. Women are changing the face of tribal governments as they become administrators, teachers, and community organizers, regaining positions of authority like those held by their ancestors. And they’re playing the flute, demonstrating once again that it is not a man’s instrument, that it’s an instrument of the people—all people.
The Native American flute has grown so popular today that it has taken on mystical qualities with some claiming it will help lead the world into salvation. For those who prefer to leave mysticism to the mystics and simply enjoy an instrument solely for its music, the native flute is a welcomed addition, finding itself in the capable hands of both male and female artists. Rather than wrongly claim the flute has served only a courting function for native men, we should accept the fact the instrument is no more masculine or feminine than life or death. It is now, as it always has been, an instrument that adds beauty and dimension to music without regard to the musician’s gender.
Want to learn more about the flute, its history, mythology, crafting, and music? Check out Native American Flute ~ A Comprehensive Guide, the book from which this information was gleaned, available through most bookstores.
These two themes recur often yet unplanned in the fiction and poetry I write. They usually emerge from a character’s self-doubt, countered by an unrealistic belief that situations, no matter how awful or threatening, will eventually turn out okay, that adversity will ultimately surrender to peace. But why do these particular themes keep showing up?
A few years ago, a political disagreement with my father ignited in him a firestorm of condemnation of other cultures and races—never mind the mixed racial heritage of my spouse and our daughter. Communication ended abruptly in mutual expletives. After more than five decades, he and I were finally done. I figured I’d never hear from him again, that the next time I visited him would be at his graveside.
The relationship with my father has always been tenuous at best. I felt safe with him only once—in 1958 as he carried me through the hospital parking lot on my way to a tonsillectomy. I was two. Fear soon obliterated that initial sense of safety, thanks to repeated episodes of rage, from verbal abuse and an eagerness to fight, to animal cruelty and domestic violence, a few incidents recounted in my published fiction.
My parents separated when I was twelve. I’d spent that summer of 1968 working in my father’s Phillips 66 service station in Crestview, Florida—sometimes alone and always under order to wear a “Wallace for President” Dixieland hat and campaign necktie. Dad’s small, two-pump station had three restrooms in back, designated as “Men,” “Women,” and “Restroom,” the third to which he directed people of color.
In the station’s front window, he’d hung a hand-drawn recreation of an auto tag that read “Put your (heart symbol) in Dixie, or get your (donkey symbol) out.” One hot day, a traveller from a northern state noticed the sign after I’d gassed his car. “If I’d seen that damn thing,” he snarled, “I wouldn’t have stopped.” I was glad my father was away at the time. Otherwise, a fight would have certainly ensued.
Bizarrely hot-tempered, my father was quick to violence. I witnessed such fury that crippled and killed animals and bruised and broke people both emotionally and physically. I felt a flood of relief and freedom when my parents split and I ended up in Pensacola, Florida, fifty miles from Crestview and my father. Marrying his second wife shortly after the divorce finalized the following year, he moved some forty-five miles north to his hometown, Andalusia, Alabama. With his wife’s deft support, he established a used car dealership that provided a good income, even though he faced legal problems at one point for buying and selling stolen cars. Due more to his wife’s business savvy than his public charm or honesty, he skirted prosecution and became wealthier than he’d ever imagined he would, though it had no effect on his refusal to pay child support, doling out only small portions when I visited him.
During my visits that never exceeded two days, he appeared to have mellowed since the divorce—specifically, his propensity to violence had apparently evaporated. I became jealous of his wife’s two sons whom he’d adopted. They, I believed, enjoyed the father I craved, a reasonable man who respected them enough to do what a parent should do. The emotional distance between us increased while the frequency of my visits decreased. Only after his death did I become aware of the psychological and physical violence he waged against his new family.
My father’s wife died in April 2015, succumbing to cancer. During her decline, her children visited her at home, but not without consequence. When his wife’s daughter said she would not move into my father’s home to take care of him after her mother’s death, he became so livid he threatened to kill her if she ever returned for any reason. She didn’t. When his oldest adopted son visited his mother a few days before she died, my father accused the son of plotting to steal his money and slugged him. The son responded instinctively, knocking my father to the floor.
“Get out!” my father raged. “Get out before I kill you! I’ll put you in the ground you ever come here again!”
Increased paranoia followed his wife’s death and led to rabid accusations that relatives were constantly plotting to steal his land and money. He threatened to kill many and alienated all but one, a cousin whose tolerance ensured the care he needed.
Already receiving thrice-weekly kidney dialysis before his wife’s death, my father had developed a notorious reputation among Andalusia’s medical workers for verbally abusing doctors and dialysis personnel. In early August 2016, he suffered a mild heart attack that placed him in a hospital where doctors determined he’d require rehabilitation center placement upon release. Facilities in his hometown, thanks to his reputation, refused to take him, necessitating placement in a Crestview facility where he existed under sedation most of the time. Shortly after placement, my cousin informed me that his condition had begun to deteriorate rapidly, that he suffered from advanced diabetes, kidney disease, and increasing dementia.
Living in New Mexico, I decided not to visit him. Any possibility of reconciliation, no matter how remote, had surely vanished within his sedation and dementia. Then my wife’s brother in Pensacola died unexpectedly, and we made the 1,350-mile drive to attend his memorial, placing us within forty minutes of the Crestview rehab facility.
On a rainy Wednesday morning in a town that’s grown unrecognizably large since my childhood, the nurse in the rehab facility’s locked wing pointed out my father at the end of a line of wheelchair-bound patients parked along one wall. The greasy pompadour he’d worn most of his adult life had been replaced by shorter hair, brushed into a faux mohawk, the result of a nurse’s playfulness. He stared blankly toward the opposite wall, murmuring. I knelt before his chair and took his hand.
“Dad?”
He slowly turned his gaze.
“You know me?”
After a moment, he nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Who am I?”
He smiled slightly. “Ray,” he whispered.
“No, not Ray.” I had no idea who Ray was. “Try again.”
Something clicked. His face tightened, his lips parted slightly, and he began to cry. “Chris…”
Just as quickly, his expression muddled, and the stare returned. He nodded. And nodded again.
I engaged him in talk as best as possible and took a few photographs.
He held my hand off and on, muttering things like, “I used to have lots of money. No more. It’s okay, it’s okay. Madelyn [his deceased wife] is coming soon.”
Aides began wheeling patients to the dining room for lunch.
“You seen Mama?” he asked. His mother had died some forty years earlier. “She ain’t been by.”
“No, but you’ll see her soon,” I said. “She’s waiting.”
A shadow of a smile played on his lips. He nodded once. “I love everybody.” He nodded again. “Everybody loves me.”
“I’m sure they do.”
He leaned slightly forward. “I’m proud…”
My breath caught as I thought for just a moment that, at last, he was about to express something he’d never before expressed.
“I’m proud,” he whispered again, “real proud of my life.”
I let the breath go. “Yeah, you should be.”
He sat back.
An African-American nurse arrived to take him to the dining room. My father, whose racist rants were legendary, reached for her hand and grinned.
“She’s nice,” he said. “People…people’s the same everywhere.”
The nurse positioned herself behind the chair.
“We need to go,” I said. “Time for you to get some lunch.”
He raised a hand toward my wife—that at one time unsuitable, racially-diverse person who’d married me thirty-eight years before.
“I love you,” he whispered.
She hugged him lightly.
He then held his hand out to me. His face twisted momentarily as though he might cry again.
“I love you,” he said. And he nodded.
“Yeah, I love you, too, Dad.”
His eyes glazed.
I lowered his hand to his lap.
The nurse said, “Y’all can wait or come back after lunch if you’d like.”
We thanked her and stepped aside, and she wheeled him away.
Six days later, the day after our return to New Mexico, he died. My cousin said that he had been en route from dialysis to the rehabilitation center when he went to sleep for the last time.
I didn’t travel to Andalusia for the funeral, but my cousin filled me in. The preacher of the church my father attended—designated as a primary recipient of Dad’s estate after he disinherited his adopted children and me—delivered a glowing tribute that had some attendees wondering who the hell the preacher was talking about.
That’s fine.
Southern preachers consider eulogies sacred opportunities to exploit insecurity to harvest souls by lobbing sizable chunks of fire and brimstone while praising the exceptional life of the dearly departed, now cozied up in heaven with Jesus.
What does it hurt?
Most of us—kind or cruel—reach for higher standards at some point. And we all fail in different degrees. It’s okay to remember people as better than they were. It’s okay to grant a little salvation.
At some point, I’ll stand at my father’s graveside, keenly aware of how he influenced me to strive to be his opposite, of how he will always affect the characters and themes in my fiction and poetry.
Simplicity, the sixth in the WindPoem ~ Native American Flute Meditationsalbum series by C.S. Fuqua, has been released and is being distributed to everywhere good music’s available. BandCamp has the digital download for $7 and includes unlimited streaming.
Better yet, sign up for the BandCamp WindPoem subscription for $30 and get ALL SIXWindPoem albums, the Sinner’s Suite World Fusion EP, and other bonus materials for immediate download. The annual subscription also includes immediate download of all new WindPoem music released during the subscription period.
WindPoem music has been praised for its meditative, relaxing quality and is utilized to create a soothing, healing environment for yoga practice, meditation, cancer treatment, hospice care, and more.
Available now at most online music stores, including Bandcamp, Amazon.com, iTunes, GooglePlay, and more, in CD and/or digital download formats. Stream the WindPoem series at Pandora, Spotify, Youtube Music, and other streaming services.
When Native American flute popularity exploded in the 1980s and ’90s, the public latched onto the “love flute” myth as a history-based tale, that Native Americans had used the flute strictly as a courting tool. Other myths associated with the flute — that it was a gift from the Great Spirit to set trapped souls free, that it was a gift from Woodpecker to help a lost boy find his way home — were ignored, forgotten, and the instrument was promoted distinctly as a man’s instrument.
It isn’t. It’s much more.
The flute’s documented, celebrated history is detailed in the new book Native American Flute: A Comprehensive Guide ~ History & Craft, the result of nearly three decades of researching, playing, and crafting the native flute. Native American Flute updates and combines into one volume my previous two books on the Native American flute, The Native American Flute: Myth, History, Craft and Native American Flute Craft, to present a comprehensive history of and crafting guide to the native flute. Native American Flute explores the documented history and mythology of the Native American flute, debunking the popular belief that the flute is only a man’s instrument.
As a freelance journalist, author, and musician, I learned to play and craft the native flute in the early 1990s, discovering its history to be extremely rich and diverse. With gender equality a way of life in native cultures before Europeans arrived in the Americas, the popular belief the flute was strictly a man’s instrument just didn’t ring true.
Early accounts of Europeans who came to North America attested the flute played a diverse, intricate role in native life, from entertainment to fertility rituals to travel, even to courting. It had never been an instrument limited to men. instead played by all for varied purposes, but the courting aspect caught the romantic fancy of European readers.
Thanks to people like explorer Carcilaso de la Vega in 1592, Europeans focused on the flute’s courting aspect. According to de la Vega, “…[T]hey did not know how to harmonize measured verse, and were mostly concerned with the passions of love … One might say that he talked with his flute. Late one night, a Spaniard came upon an Indian girl he knew in Cuzco and asked her to return to his lodging, but she said: ‘Let me go my ways, sir. The flute you hear from that hill calls me with such tender passion that I must go toward it. Leave me, for heaven’s sake, for I cannot but go where love draws me, and I shall be his wife and he my husband.’”
As flute popularity has grown, women musicians have had to overcome discrimination and prejudice regarding their playing. Even award-winning flautists like Mary Youngblood have encountered male flautists who refuse to play on the same stage, shamans who refuse to bless a flute before an event, and venues that cancel performances by women when male performers complain.
Native American Flute sets the record straight, updating and combining the information from Fuqua’s first two books on the flute—The Native American Flute: Myth, History, Craft and Native American Flute Craft—into one volume to present a comprehensive, documented exploration of the native flute’s history and a fully illustrated, step-by-step crafting guide for making both the ancient and modern versions of the Native American flute, an instrument truly for all people.
Native American Flute is a available through most bookstores.
Mention the Native American flute, and the first thing that comes to mind is a beautifully carved piece of artwork that produces soulful sounds. No screaming guitars. No banjos. No brass section. Just that single instrument and its haunting melody that serves as soundtrack to countless Youtube meditation videos.
But the native flute is far more than that.
Las Cruces-based musician C.S. Fuqua’s first six WindPoem ~ Native American Flute Meditations albums fully celebrate the traditional sounds of the native flute, but Fuqua’s native flute music has taken a new turn in his seventh album, Different Direction, blending the flute’s soulful, meditative traditions into diverse compositions of world music influenced by bluegrass, rock, and jazz that combine into a refreshing sound that is at once both familiar and yet new.
Fuqua is not the first to broaden the native flute’s range and use in music. The Rippingtons jazz group featured Robert Tree Cody on two cuts on their 1999 album Topaz. Twenty-one years later, that album remains one of the group’s most popular.
Classically-trained musician R. Carlos Nakai is best known for his traditional native flute work, but he has also broadened the flute’s use in other music genres, collaborating with guitarist William Eaton on new age productions, composers James DeMars and Phillip Glass on classical compositions, the Japanese group the Wind Travelin’ Band, and Tibetan flautist and vocalist Nawang Khechog. Yet, despite these beautiful excursions into other genres, the music that sustains Nakai’s popularity, and that of most native flute musicians, remains rooted in the traditional Native American sound.
Not only is the native flute’s use so grounded in traditional sound, it’s also still fighting the invented belief that it’s a male-only instrument, a false narrative created by European invaders whose sole purpose was to romanticize aspects of native life, even though the flute was played and enjoyed by both genders and all ages. Times are changing, though, thanks to award-winning flautists like Mary Youngblood who have blazed a path of acceptance and expansion that others now follow.
Fuqua’s Different Direction contains twelve world jazz cuts, with native flute featured as primary instrument in more than half of the instrumentals. As more artists produce albums featuring the native flute in modern music, the instrument will continue to expand its range, securing its deserved place in bands of all genres, holding its own with the loudest guitars and most strident brass sections to create a multi-cultural celebration for the ears.
Fuqua’s Different Direction is available for streaming and/or purchase on most major music platforms, including Pandora, Deezer, Amazon, iTunes, and Fuqua’s Bandcamp music website.
