[Music] you [Music] you hi this is Charlie lots of yellow with blue bear flutes and of course you can find us on blue bear flutes calm here on YouTube under the same name as well as just about anywhere online these days today I wanted to share a little bit of information with you really something about the history of the Native American flute as well as some of the misconceptions of the Native American flute the information I'm going to share with you might shed some light on a few subjects for you and it may also confuse you a little bit and I'll get started like this a very very dear friend of mine and I were talking a couple of days ago and we were talking about the changes of the history of Native American culture not the changes that took place in history but the changes that are taking place today and I don't mean the things like equal rights and having new websites I mean historical changes that have been taking place such as changing the way that we say things and do things and rewriting making up new words for old words that we already have words for and what-have-you and what happens with anything if you rewrite a history of it and then share it with everybody eventually everybody only knows that information is the history of that particular thing and it's it's something that really it brings new information into old areas where old information should be present so like I said just want to share a little bit with you today and give you a few different perspectives there might be a little confusing and if they are I'm sorry about that really the truth it can be confusing sometimes and I'll share something with you about that at the end of this video so one of my favorite misconceptions and any of you that have followed us for a long time know has to do with the number of fingerings that is on a Native American flute there are a lot of people out there that believe traditional flutes were all six whole flutes or that they were all this or they were all that and of course that's probably the farthest from the truth originally there were a lot of six whole flutes mostly from about 3,000 years ago to and that's because historically I think a lot of change took place at about that time in Native American history things were a little bit easier on us we weren't chasing food for all of our needs and many of the people who were gardening and farming had a little bit more time on their hands and they they really found a way to ease their their pains to ease their mind to make their life more rich and full and to give themselves meaning with you know any culture art and music have always always come hand in hand with those type of Renaissance with that in mind at that time in history we see a large growth of five and six whole flutes there's a mass outpouring of these kind of instruments prior to that you find that there historically were a lot of four whole instruments and also historically this little piece here really seemed to come into play about 3,000 or so years ago now today one of the misconceptions I've I've heard is that two non natives invented or created the Native American flute not necessarily made the instrument what it is the idea of the instrument but rather they made it B minor pentatonic and I believe that this idea probably comes from the idea from the Ben hunt guide to Indian arts and crafts it's a small Boy Scout Handbook only about five by seven or so and maybe about a quarter of an inch thick and in that book which I remember from my childhood flipping through it and looking at the pages and and everything from containing skins to fishing and to to making drums and even some songs some original Native American songs that I believe are probably historically accurate are listed in this book the last two pages of the book were how to make the Native American flute and in the process of making that flute they described how to make two six whole flutes and this is two pages of course my book is a couple hundred pages long on how to make Native American flutes and I still feel like it falls short sometimes I feel like I need to go back and add so much more because there is just so much into doing this but you know with regards to those two pages that were offered there may have been one piece of information that was left out and that was the correct inside diameter was not exactly on par with the historical references we have historically the size of the flu was usually small I've met a few people that say otherwise but typically they usually say and don't have any way to reproduce this other than of course the Kenan of the Qin otto's the pan flutes which have been made in large chamber instruments other than that what we call the Native American flute in North American Indian flute we're typically five whole flutes usually about a half inch or so in diameter on the inside they were made out of natural materials that grew here and were available that we're in that size and people made them with a number of different hole configurations everything from four or five six hole flutes to whole flutes flutes with a number of holes that we don't even have fingers to cover suggesting that they use them at different times and it's just unfathomable to me after having recreated historical Native American flutes that to people that of course were non-native in our lifetime decided that they were supposed to be minor pentatonic so that's kind of an unusual idea especially when of course if you haven't seen it I have a video on making the traditional six hole flute based on even some of the schematics that were in the Ben hunt guide you can go back and follow those schematics in my video kind of shows you you know it's gonna turn out to be minor pentatonic if it's made directly so that's something to think of one thing to that has always always concerned me is that when we started making videos about how to make Native American flutes you whistles and everything else that we teach on our YouTube channel and of course outside of YouTube I mean this is just one of our facets we you know go to a number of locations to teach classes you know books out on the subject and more information available on our website and through others that we share this information with today however one of the things that always concern me with so many people that saved or hid their secrets as we call them the secrets of how to do this kind of thing and that's what inspired me first to make the video the secret of Native American flute making is because all these secrets are just secrets so silly one thing I would like to point out too that many people may not really be in tune with it depends on where you grew up and what you had to do in your life and even though I've shared a lot of my history with with all of our viewers and friends and everybody and they know a lot about me you just don't really know somebody until you walk you know 100 miles in their moccasins or in some cases thousands of miles and their moccasins but you know it's just really it's something else how people reacted to us sharing this information but people who do share information that sometimes is a whole nother group of people people who profess to have knowledge they usually have ill intentions and I've had a number of people notice that I don't have any intentions there's things that we have videos to teach how to make that I don't sell for example there are a number of things that we make and I've actually in our time my wife and I have noticed a number of flute makers come up and some of them have even kindly attributed us even though I'll tell you it's all on them but they've kindly attributed us for giving them their start into fruit but recently like I say this gentleman asked me I want to learn how to make really good quality flute so I can offer them inexpensively to our group there's no time there's no anything that I can give you that will make that happen there's really not I really wish that I could because you know it's a lot of work it really is and we'd love to share some of that burden as my friend always Kjetil jokes and laughs whenever he hears one of our youtube videos and I talk about sharing the burden of learning to make Native American flutes but that gets down to the last point that I have about the history of Native American flutes isn't something that you can just go 10 click or even take my word for it please don't don't take my word for it don't look for this history for yourself but before you ever profess it to other people before you ever suggest this is a good example of the history of Native American flutes or this person seems to have it together or whatever before you even go there you got to stop for a minute and you gotta learn the truth and this is something that I'm gonna tell you this is probably the most confusing part of this video is the truth the truth is not easily understood it's not easily found or discovered it's not easy to to know as a matter of fact it's nearly impossible to know the truth you can only perceive the truth these aren't just fancy words you really got to stop and think about them write them down it's not easy to know the truth people profess that they know the truth usually try and take advantage of you ninety-nine out of a hundred of those people or groups organizations or anything as a sort they profess that they know the truth they're usually trying to take advantage of you or deceive you for some unknown reason who knows why the truth is only something you can perceive and what that means is you can have a glimpse of it you can see it through the jungle through the trees you don't always know what the truth is the truth sometimes is changing I'll give you my favorite example it's a tool that we use to teach people to play the Native American flute when we see them in person I've only done it on one video and maybe one day I'll make another video for it but I think that video was how to teach others to play the Native American flute any of you that are fact checking checking what I mean but the truth for example well my favorite truths that I like to show share with people is about a drink bottle and I always ask them is that drink bottle half full or half empty immediately at home no matter how many people are watching this 75 85 percent of yours they are saying the bottles half-full and really I'm just pros in a question I'm not even really truly asking you because I already know or at least I perceive the truth of this idea the drink bottle when it has any amount of liquid in it it comes up to the halfway point if we call it half-full it's because we perceive ourselves to be an optimist if we call it half empty it's usually because we're being silly or facetious it's not because we're true pessimists there are so few pessimists in creation I don't mean just humans there so few anything that's a pessimist you'll never find a pessimistic turtle they're always optimistic you'll never find a pessimistic mosquito oh I'm gonna die today I think you know they don't they don't look at it like that oh I'm gonna smack them but they don't think about it like that you'll never find a pessimistic you know a lot of animals in nature really only people can even perceive to be pessimist and most of them really aren't most of them really aren't they're just renegades they're trying to go against the grain swim upstream make things more difficult really and I've I'm there I'm with you guys if you are one of those renegades I've gosh I've done that on so many different levels I'm doing it right now if you didn't know but the truth is the drink bottle this is the the truth the Zen truth if you want to call it this is the Taoist truth this is the Native American truth this is the Tibetan monk version of the truth this is the godly version of the truth never say that in front of people so many people are polarized about what God is and everything this is the truth the bottle is always full if you own that bottle somebody gave it to you and the bottle didn't have any liquid in this full of air if it's only half full of liquid it's half full of errors that kind of truth is not something that you can you can know that you can glimpse at the scientists the people who are oh gosh I can see the vision of this friend of mine that called himself very anal-retentive I don't even use that phrase but he calls himself anal retentive than he is he really is but he he told me he said I'm very anal retentive about these kind of things I'm a perfectionist and you know perfection is not something that we can we can actually be we can try to attain him that's fantastic more hats off to all of you but you know the truth the truth is not the knowledge of seeing that you can look at the bottle and you can nitpick it to death and say it's not quite it's evaporating at this rate you know 10 seconds ago may been full but right now it's missing point zero zero two percent who knows there's so many ways you can you can take that apart that is still not the truth the truth is the bottle is always full and it's hard to understand it's a little bit easier to perceive and I hope you guys can see some of what I'm trying to tell you through the forest through the trees they say you can't see the forest for the trees and it's such a deep saying that I do use on a daily basis it seems it makes my life what it is but anyway I hope you guys are doing well thank you so very much for listening to my long-winded information about the Native American flute notice we didn't really I told you some bits and pieces of the history but the true history the truth of it that you need to perceive is out there you just got to look for it and don't look in one location don't look in two locations don't trust anything that you hear anything that you see anything anybody tells you trust your feelings and your your belief system whatever that may be follow that it'll lead you to the right place so anyway best of luck to all of you making flutes and playing flutes out there once again this is Charlie Montreux triela signed out for blueberry flutes and blueberry flutes com we look forward to seeing you getting very soon y'all take care you [Music] you