The Spirit of the Flute

I'm Keith Bear, I live on Ft. Berthold Reservation

I kind of started life as a Sioux boy and ended up being raised bi-culturally, Sioux Mandan with my mother and my relatives here, emphasizing the Mandan/Hidatsa part and then in first grade, shortly before first grade I was place in my first foster home and in 12 years of school I lived in fourteen non-Indian homes, not including the relatives I was spending time with during vacations and holidays and things like that back home here. So, cultural diversity, I got a first hand experience pretty much all my life.

I purchased my first flute through a trade with Sonny Tate Navacloya from Oklahoma. We worked in the oil field together in Cody, Wyoming area and I watched him carving on a stick one day, and you don't really interrupt people, you just kind of observe, and they want to tell you they'll tell you. Finally I saw it getting rounded and started to be complete so I thought it was a pipe. Oh no, he said, this is a flute and then he showed me the holes and popped the holes in there and by the end of that evening he was playing this, you know, kind of sour note but it made a little whistle and the next morning when I came into the quantzet, there was this beautiful, beautiful sound. I had seen flutes as a kid hanging on the walls or in bundles of our people up here, but they were medicine. We were told not to play with those things as children I finally got him to trade.

I carried it for two years and I would show it off and finally I decided I wanted to change my life for my family, my kids, cause I knew I had a drinking problem or drug problem then and I wanted to change.

I ended up in Flagstaff, Arizona and so I went up on a cinder cone behind our house and stayed up there for three days and three nights and brought myself down.

The wind blew through the flute the first night and made a kind of real low tone.

The second night the leaves of the little brush that was there and the grass would kind of sway over those holes and it sang a little bit.

That was kind of scary, but I believe in the spirit. I thanked them for being there and for comforting me with that song and then when I did come down, it took me about maybe a week of making a lot of ugly noises on that thing, but then I got my first song.

I learned that song and kind of expanded on it a little bit, kind of improvised it a little bit and started listening rather than trying to play the flute and pretty soon it just started to sing to me and it was fascinating because my fingers would be moving, my mind would be thinking something else, and here is this beautiful music coming out of this thing and I wonder where did that song come from, where did it go now. So, even now, you know, I have come a long ways since that time and I've got three CDs out there that have done pretty good and I got a couple in the can and one more in my head. So you know it is pretty fascinating that these simple pieces of wood have so much life and it does so many things. As long as you honor that spirit I think it will take care of you and it has been my healing process. It's really nice to have something culturally.

I've already been nominated for a Grammy and won a Nammy, and this is really, really humbling because,I can't read music and I've got to play and record with nine symphonies around the country. I recorded with the Grand Forks Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the National Symphony out of Washington DC last year here, my most recent. That was awesome to stand with some of the best musicians in the world and have no idea what that piece of paper says in front of me as far as music.

I'm continuing to encourage people to listen to the music, to be a part of the music and just enjoy the music whether they're making it or listening to it. It's a healing thing for the players as well as the listener. It's a journeying thing in the mind and the heart for the player as well as the listener. So those flutes have a very beautiful spirit. We're the heartbeat and we're the breath for them and the spirit of that flute and that song and that person will come out as long as they believe. It's amazing.