Sacred Circle: Notlvsi and the Native American Flute

By Chuck Hicks

“…the music goes round in circles. Same old simple rhythms, melodies, harmonies and verse/chorus/bridge song structures. Nothing really changes: nothing is really new. But each new generation of young musicians rediscovers the wheel…”

~ Ian Anderson, flautist and lead singer of Jethro Tull

Like too many people in these parts, I claim some Native American ancestry. Unlike most I can prove it: my maternal great-grandmother Verda Lambert Hipps was a quarter Cherokee and her name was included on the Baker Roll, qualifying her to receive U.S. government checks around Christmastime. She was partially descended from the Indians who hid in the Snowbird Mountains in Graham County, NC, during the forced removal of Cherokees from the area after the Treaty of New Echota in 1836. In my mind I can still see her seated by a wood-burning stove in her cabin home, her hair bound up in a decorative scarf tied at the front, making bead jewelry to sell in Cherokee, NC. Her daughter Nell was a banjo picker in a country ballad band.

My only previous experience with ‘Cherokee music’ came through two sources: the Welch Family Singers, a gospel band known for singing Christian songs in the Cherokee tongue; and Walker Calhoun, a folklorist’s darling noted for combining old-time banjo picking with traditional Cherokee singing. But in neither case could the music be considered pristine Native American.

Around 1900 a Minnesota school teacher named Francis Densmore made field recordings of the flute music of a Cheyenne named Turkey Legs, the earliest known of this type of music. It was explained to Densmore that Indian flute music is “the music of love…because love cannot be put into words.”

“Love, courtship, healing, meditation…all those elements are included in Native American flute music,” says Jeff Brown, a part-Cherokee flautist who goes by the name Notlvsi (pronounced na tu shi). Notlvsi self-produced a professionally recorded album of 14 pieces of flute music entitled Sacred Circle. His goal with this recording was to celebrate the circle of life depicted in one version of Native American religion – a tall order given that there is no generic, pan-tribal belief system, or music to accompany it. But Notlvsi was driven by one of the recurrent motifs in Native American culture – a vision quest.

“I had never played a Native American flute. Then I had a vision to play this music. For six years I learned to play. It’s the circle of my life, meeting up with old friends, departing, 30 some years later getting back together, then realizing that someday we’ll be leaving this earth and starting a new beginning.”

In actuality, Sacred Circle encompasses three concentric circles: the life-death-rebirth cycles of the artist, his instruments, and the whole world, as well.

Notlvsi used three self-made flutes for the recordings, made according to tradition. No two Native American flutes sound exactly the same because no two people are exactly alike. The length of the instrument is determined by the distance from the player’s arm pit to the tips of his fingers. The spacing between the holes is the width of the player’s thumb; the size of the air-chamber inside the instrument is the span of the player’s hand. Notlvsi built his from two types of cedar and walnut. But there was more to the construction of these flutes than getting the right dimensions.

“You have to ‘smudge’ the instrument in order to purify it. I used sage to smudge mine. That process takes the bad energies out, like detoxing your body. The wood I used came from already-fallen trees; I didn’t cut down the trees to get the wood. When I blew into the instrument, the spirit came back into the wood, and its circle of life began again.”

The rekindling of life in the wood is a metaphor for the larger principles reflected on Sacred Circle:

“My music is not that radical; rather, it’s about being connected with one's environment, the ‘whole.’ About what one has been taught by his elders, vis a vis life experience. We are here to care for the Mother Earth, not her for us. In the old days, when we took a plant or a root out of her, we gave back two-fold to replenish the earth. In the Native American pantheon the ‘Grandfather’ was the Great Spirit, the Creator; and then there is Earth Mother.”

That is not far removed from ancient near-eastern agricultural religion, in which the “Lord” (Ba’al) and his consort Astarte replenished the earth by mating in the spring.

Sacred Circle flows like a creation/destruction story; the first track is titled, appropriately enough, “The Beginning.” Notlvsi drew liberally from drum loops, sounds of wind and thunder, and Native American chants to accompany his esoteric flute-playing. In this regard he follows in the footsteps of R. Carlos Nakai, the father of the modern Native American flute revival. In fact, three of the 14 tracks on the album are ‘covers’ of Nakai-composed pieces.

“’Zuni’ and ‘Wiosete Olowan Inkpa Taya’ were both written by Carlos Nakai, so they reflect more the Plains and southwestern Indian cultures,” says Notlvsi. “I wanted to capture the spirit of both the western and eastern woodland tribes.”

For example, “Ka ma ma” (Cherokee for butterfly) is a microcosm of the entire set. In this piece Notlvsi opens with somber lines that shift into up-tempo, hexatonic patterns as the butterfly emerges from its cocoon and springs to life. Then the piece capitulates into a reprise of the opening mood – the death of the insect after a relatively short lifespan.

“Broken Arrow” reflects on the 99 treaties with the Cherokee that were broken by federal and state governments.

“Trail of Tears” is easily the most accessible composition – listeners will readily recognize the strains of “Amazing Grace” on Notlvsi’s flute. “This is in memory of those who died on the forced march out west,” says the artist, “and this is the Cherokee national anthem.” Ironically, the words to this song (which are not sung here) talk about Jesus Christ, His parousia and His vindication of the Cherokee people. According to Notlvsi:

“When people no longer take care of earth itself, then the thunderbird (she causes earthquakes, volcanoes) will come up from the center of the earth and burn it with her wings. The earth will rest without humanity for a thousand years until a new start. Grandfather will create again a new beginning. I don’t know if this cycle has repeated itself in the past.”

The syncretic similarities between Native American and millennial Christian eschatons have not been lost on modern history. During the solar eclipse of New Year’s Day 1889, a Paiute shaman named Wovoka claimed to have a vision of the earth opening and swallowing the white race. The Indians, meanwhile, were to be taken up in the air with Jesus to await the purification of the earth – a process that would take a thousand years to complete. Thus began the Ghost

Dance movement of 1890 which ended tragically in the well-documented massacre at Wounded Knee. Wovoka’s prophecy of Indians being caught up in the air to escape world-wide judgment bore a peculiar resemblance to the Christian pre-tribulational rapture teaching that began in the 1840’s. Regardless, the Ghost Dance’s millenarian hope was dashed by the intervention of U.S. armed forces – a finale eerily similar to the catastrophe that befell the Branch Davidians at Waco, TX in 1993.

Notlvsi does not worry himself with eschatological details. His concern is creating an authentic Native American musical experience. I asked Notlvsi about the relative importance of the flute in the oeuvre, and was surprised by his response: “The drum is by far the most important instrument for Indians. The flute – it is more an individual thing. Young warriors played it to attract lovers. The shaman played it to drive away evil spirits, or to bridge the spirit world. But the drum brought the whole tribal community together.”

He goes on:

“The modern Native American music – it has elements of rock and rap in it in order to get the young people interested. If you create something new you can go with it anywhere you want. However, if you replicate a piece of music from prior to 1900, tradition says it has to be played note for note.”

Intrigued by this comment, I showed him this quote from Ian Anderson, himself a flautist, of the modern rock band Jethro Tull:

“It's not that I dislike traditional music, it's just that I find it unnecessary to be tied up in that rather restrictive world of mechanically and practically perfect renditions of English folk or jazz or black American blues. To try to emulate the music precisely as some sort of historical traditional approach of any culture seems almost irrelevant. Much better to sort of soak up the ambience of it and if that comes through your music, fine. If it doesn't, well, something else will."

Notlvsi said he understood and respected where Anderson was coming from, but added:

“Like bluegrass – you feel it in your soul; if you’re not born into that culture and haven’t lived it, you might appreciate it at a distance, but you don’t get the same resonance. By playing exactly like the forefathers, I met my ancestors, one on one, and connected with them through this [Native American] music.”