By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Flutist Anthony Natividad makes his own
instruments from bamboo.
The nose knows
A nose flute
By Burl Burlingame
gets to the truth of the matter,
musician says
Star-BulletinWhy do Hawaiians play flute through their nose? "That's because the mouth can lie," says Anthony Natividad. "The air from the lungs and the heart that goes through the nose is pure. So ... if you're going to play a love song to a woman, play it through your nose. She'll know you really mean it. The nose flute is the instrument of sincerity."
Natividad is playing flutes -- both through the nose and mouth -- at the Tau Dance Theatre presentation Sunday. The show includes dances, stories and choir music. Natividad was drafted by director Peter Rockford Espiritu when the choreographer heard him playing at a craft fair.
"I'll play anywhere. Music is so wonderful that sometimes my brother and I just walk down the street jammin' on harmonicas because we dig the sound," said Natividad. "we like to see people smile."
Natividad, 33, played trumpet at Wahiawa Intermediate and Leilehua High School, getting used to Western tonalities, and continued dabbling in music when he became a window tinter at Hawaii Sun Control. He eventually settled down with high school sweetheart Jamie after years of missed opportunities, and she encouraged musical experimentation.
"Look at this," says Natividad, pulling out what looks like a adobe meatball. "It's an Indian ocarina, a clay flute, that Jamie bought me in the southwest. Check it out" -- he blows into a small hole, and the sound is pure and crystalline, hanging in the air like icicles -- "I love this thing. I drove Jamie batty playing it around the house.
"I started bringing it with me to tintings, and I'd be putting tint on office windows, and someone would say, 'eh, Anthony, play da t'ing,' and I'd play the ocarina for 10, 15 minutes.
"It would get quite a crowd! No one would believe that such a sweet sound comes out of such of a little thing, something that looks like a squashed ninja turtle."
Then Jamie bumped into Inca flutist Wachan Bajiyoparek, and purchased a hand-made flute for Anthony right out of Bajiyoparek's backpack.
"It sounded so wonderful, so natural. I was blown away! That flute just sang! Wachan became my biggest influence, my mentor, yeah. He not only taught me how to play, he showed me how to read the bamboo, to understand the forest."
Hand-made non-Western flutes use a pentatonic musical scale in which the notes are complementary, like the black keys on a piano. Flute are simple to construct, but devilishly difficult to tune. You need nearly perfect pitch. The principle is familiar to anyone who's blown air across a bottle with liquid in it -- the size of the mouthpiece and the volume of trapped air make all the difference. With flutes, it's the size of the holes and the length of the piece.
"I bought some expensive flutes to study, and then began making my own. I get the bamboo, cut to length, drill 3/8-inch holes and then massage the holes to shape and in tune with a rat-tail file. Make the hole too big, and it's ruined."
Bamboo can come from anywhere, and Natividad prefers pieces that have already fallen and hardened to green bamboo. "Hawaiian bamboo, for some reason, tends to split when it dries. First I check the forest for a good feeling, and if the forest doesn't want me there, aloha. The only time I went against that feeling, I slipped and fell on my butt, real hard. I'll look around, see if there's one or two stalks that want to come home with me.
"You don't take anything from the forest without giving in return. So I play songs in the forest, to thank nature for letting me to be the tool that allows the bamboo to become a beautiful flute."
Natividad has begun sharing his love of flutistry with elementary school classes (teachers -- his pager number is 846-7003), and stresses that the process is a team effort. "The beauty of native cultures is that we use what we have to make what we want. You can make a beautiful instrument out of a soda can, a piece of PVC pipe. Anything.
"We are co-creators. Without the bamboo, without the nature, and without the artist and the craftsman, there would be no flute, no music. It's not a solitary thing. Music is a natural process. We're all involved."
Tau Dance Theater
Featuring: Storyteller Hina Kahanu, Our Lady of Peace Cathedral Samoan Choir and flutist Anthony Natividad
