I discovered a wonderful new songbook for anyone who's looking for new music to play on the Native American Flute. It's called "Music for Native American Flute, Volume One", by Jessica Walsh. The publisher sent me a review copy and I fell in love with it.
First of all, this book has been around for a while (2005), it just hasn't been very well advertised until now. The book has the sheetmusic (Nakai Tab + flute pictographs) for 40 songs. There is a companion CD included on which Jessica plays all of the songs on a variety of flutes.
What I really love about this book is the variety of world music included. Jessica
a has songs from around the world, including folk tunes from Scotland, Ecuador, France, Walsh, Ireland, Japan, Greece, Israel, Palestine, Canada plus a few classical tunes. No where else have I seen a such a refreshing collection of tunes all transcribed for the modern-tuned (pentatonic 6-hole) Native American Flute. There are nine tunes written entirely in the basic pentatonic scale and will be easy for beginners to start with (no cross-fingering). Beyond that the rest of the songs will keep any advanced beginner to intermediate flute player challenged for a while.
Here's my favorite quote from the book:
"Flutes are like horses; they act as mirrors of the spirit"
This book is listed as "Volume One". I sure hope that Jessica is successful enough with this publication that she continues to deliver more high quality and unique songbooks like this one.
If you're interested in purchasing this book, I will have it for sale at the Loping Wolf Winter Gathering this weekend (Dec 9, 2007). Otherwise you can contact me directly for purchase.
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