Oh, Gosh... Where do we start? I guess it started with my brothers and I getting our first taste of rock & pop rock when my mom bought us our first couple of LPs - The Beatles and The Association and arguing who was to play guitar, who was on drums, bass, etc. Music was in my family also; dad played trombone for a 13 piece swinging big band back when he was putting himself
through school and his mom was an accomplished piano/organ, sax and accordion player and, I believe, a music teacher.
I followed in my dad's footsteps, sort of - picked up his old trombone and played in the school band from 7th grade on. I was in the marching band during the summer and football season and in the varsity concert band during the winter and spring. So the range of music I was exposed to was quite wide - everything from contemporary to classic, jazz to the classic rock of the 60's - 80's.
The trombone is rather difficult to carry round, let alone pull out when your having a party with friends and having a sing-a-long, so I picked up a couple of harmonicas and started piddling around with them. Much easier to carry, I tell you. Never got very good on them though. You need a lot of wind to get those things to sound good and I was smoking too much to get very proficient with them.
In Thailand, I've come across some hand made wood flutes and some albums that started me on a collection binge for a few years. My mom came out and saw my collection and I guess it made an impression on her and one day I received in the mail a beautiful bamboo flute hand made from a guy in the states. He had set up a stall in one of the local flee markets mom went to. I've now got four of his flutes all different styles; one is your traditional style, held off to the right in the key of G; another is a bamboo sax again in G; but my two favs are a Native American flute in D and a Japanese Shakuhachi - both being pentatonic which means there are only 5 notes in the scale instead of 8 as in most musical scales. Cool, soulful sounding instruments.
Here's a short clip of my favorite song (Inner Voices) of one of my favorite American Flautist, R. Carlos Nakai.
Imagine, sitting on the edge of a canyon at dusk, taking in all your surroundings to the very core of your being:
The original sang is 6:24 minutes long. Nice to kick back and not think to - thinking screws us up sometimes and we have to learn not to think once in a while. Just listen to the Inner Voices.
For more Nakai,
click here.
!
