Drums, Flutes and Rattles....
 

How many of us on here have a NAI Flute and play it... I know Thunder Bow owns and plays a Drone Flute.... I have only a small pocket flute, purcihased from the Trading Post at Monument Vally...it has an amazing tome and I can lose myself when playing it..
Two years ago I was on a drum making workshop and I felt it was now or never as I really wanted to make my own drum, instead of borrowing one all the time.
The skin is Red Deer and the hoop is of English Oak..its about 15 inches in diameter and has Cherokee lacing.. I made the beater too... I finished it in a day, but it had to dry out and tighten up for another day..I wrote inside the drum is purpose and my drum is for Love & Healing.. I have not painted it as I feel such a natural beauty in the skin.. I truly love it...and use it in NAI Drum circles, Pow Wows etc and for Drum healing sessions. Yes it was Blessed by the Elders too.

I have yet to make a rattle.. I have the leather etc but with failing eye sight its not so easy to stitch the leather shape.. I hope to get it made, like most things with a little help from my friends.

So come on, tell us about yours if you have one...

I saw an amazing Pony Drum at the workshop, it still had the Mayne on it and it had such a tone..

I've got a pipe flute made by the remnants of the Incas from the mountains of Peru. I love playing it because it makes me imagine being in the mountains near Cuzco and seeing the happy Incas go about their lives. My dogs however, do not like it. They try to get at the flute and bite it or take it away. Maybe they do not like my playing haha :D

I own a Piute Hand drum, that I bought in Virginia City NV. back in 1992. It is still holding together after all those years. It has traveled far with me, and has been to all corners of the Big Reservation.

I own other flutes as well. I do not make flutes or drums and rattles.

True, each to his own skill, I have a friend Steve who makes Flutes and another friend Jim Firewolf who makes Drums.. The rattles we were shown how to make but at the workshop I just couldn't fit everything in the time allowed..
The Drum workshop had a batch of skins come over from USa but we had problems with them in that they didn't dry our evenly and many drums split..
So the last batch we used were the ones I had and were sourced in the uk..

Someone we knew was lucky enough to buy a Buffalo drum on Ebay..for £45 .. I saw it, it was 40 inches across and sounded surreal.. I can never find a bargain like that..

It is Good to see you doing this. :smile:

Well I do try... I have attended a good few NAI history, culture and Spirituality course over the years.. For Its about acting in a respectful manner, observing ceremony and traditonal crafts...

I make NDN drums and was shown how to do so traditionally many yrs back when I still lived back home. I get calls to make one once in a while for others or I make them for myself. I also make rattles when asked to for others and other items. I use my main drum pretty much daily.

Makoiyi

Thats really good then...My drum has cherokee laceing.. I prefer that type and I find they keep the tension better.. I do play when I get the chance in a Drum Circles now and then. I use a large padded drum bag, to transport and keep it snug..

I made a Medicine Drum several years ago. It is Deer skin, and the in the skin face of the Drum I actually see the image of a gentle Deer's face. It is about 15" across and has traditional counted knot tying which was really amazing to do. I'm afraid i can't recall which group it came from originally. I don't play it often... I was keen to work with it whilst Journeying, but found I couldn't drum and journey at the same time :-o I do use it when I spontaneously get a nudge to just Drum to shift energy in the more still areas of the home, just to liven the energy up... and sometimes I just feel like getting her out of her bag and playing ... It's a very beautiful drum.

Since then, I travelled to north-east USA and south-east Canada and finally met my first NA flute, and became so completely entranced by it that I now have, well, many Flute voices travelling this journey with me... People love Flute, and I'm ask by so many people to play at many different functions... some public, and others very private :) It always feel like a huge honour to play a beautiful Flute for people, because so many are truly touched by a flute's voice. :)

Oops... my Rattle :)
 

I forgot to mention my Rattle...

It is a compilation of bits from the Australia desert 20 years ago, and then from the Australian desert 2 years ago.

On a road trip with my family in the mid 90s I collected some Boab pods. When I felt moved to make a rattle, and was thinking of a small gourd, I suddenly remembered the Boab pods of decades earlier, and tracked one down.

I was wondering what to use to create the Rattle's voice, and remembered reading that indigenous peoples from many countries used the sandy quartz grains that ants jettison from their mounds.

I was at an beautiful singing event (Big Sig in the Desert) an hour or so out of Alice Springs in central Australia where I was completely blissed out at the amazing time we were sharing, and I felt like a few minutes alone to just breathe in the wonder of it all, and sat myself down in a dry river bed. In that moment I saw ants walking to and fro their mound, and looked more carefully, thinking "how amazing it would be to find tiny quartz pebbles for my Rattle.." Sure enough, once i peered intently enough, I saw literally hundreds of suitably sized quartz grains/pebbles, and used my fingers as tweezers, to pluck the tiny things from the ground. I counted a good number of them, and pocketed them with much gratitude.

The Boab pod, my beautiful Big Sing-imprinted pebbles, some very soft, fine leather lace as a wrap, and a tiny Superb Fairy Wren feather, that arrived almost in my lap just as the Rattle was being created, and my rattle was complete. I use it the same way I use my flute, and all aspects of it make me smile and bring back very special memories :)