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MUSIC TO THEIR EARS
South Dakota’s recognition of the indigenous flute honors its artists, songs and history.
SOUTH DAKOTA has a state bird, insect, sport, dessert, soil and now, indigenous musical instrument. House Bill 1196, passed during the 2022 Legislative session, formally recognizes the traditional flute as the official indigenous musical instrument of South Dakota.
Rep. Tamara St. John, who represents District 1 (Brown, Day, Marshall and Roberts counties) and works as an archivist for the Sisseton Wahpeton Sioux Tribe, sponsored the bill, which found widespread support in both the state Senate and the House. “As someone who works with preservation and wanting to retain traditional knowledge, this was really important,” St. John says. “I could see the importance in it.”
Momentum for the bill gained steam at an annual reception for legislators organized by Secretary David Flute and the Department of Tribal Relations. Kevin Locke, a hoop dancer and flute player from Wakpala in the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, was invited to perform. Afterwards, he and Flute talked about the possibility of recognizing the instrument. “It was a suggestion on my part,” Locke says. “I told them that the only state that officially recognizes anything indigenous is the state of Hawaii, which recognizes the ukulele as a state instrument. The ukulele is European but has been indigenized by the Polynesian people. I said the indigenous flute, if adopted, would be the only authentic, pre-European, musical aesthetic ever adopted by a state government.”
Secretary Flute, a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and a direct descendant of a man known as Flute Player, says he’s appreciative of both the legislature and the governor for supporting the measure. “Our state has some of the best indigenous flute players in all of America and highlighting the instrument they use to bring music to all people is an honor to them as artists and to all South Dakotans,” Flute says.
Kevin Locke, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, plays the indigenous flute professionally and for hundreds of students each year as he travels to schools throughout the Upper Midwest. He also helps them construct flutes and teaches them to play a few notes.
Locke began playing the indigenous flute in 1972, just as the cultural tradition was in danger of disappearing. He was attending the University of South Dakota in Vermillion and went to a performance by Richard Fool Bull, a flute player from the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Fool Bull was in his 80s and possessed a nearly unparalleled knowledge of the flute. “I struck up a conversation with him,” Locke says. “I asked if maybe any of his kids or grandkids were interested in that tradition. He said it wasn’t anything of interest to the younger people. I thought that was really bad, and that somebody should take it up. And he just stopped right there. He was quiet, just staring at me, and he said, ‘Yeah, you’re right. Somebody should do this. What about you? You could do it. In fact, you’re the one who’s going to do this.’ It really jolted me when he said that. I didn’t say anything. I just shook his hand and I left, and I never saw him again after that.”
Richard Fool Bull, an indigenous flute player from the Rosebud Indian Reservation, inspired Kevin Locke to carry on the tradition.
But then Locke went home to the Standing Rock Reservation and started listening to records of flute music. His mother surprised him by going into another room and retrieving a flute that Fool Bull had made. He started playing along and eventually learned some traditional songs. Since then, Locke has produced nearly a dozen albums of flute music.
Bryan Akipa, of Agency Village, is another of the state’s pre-eminent flute players (both he and Locke have been awarded the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the country’s highest award in folk and traditional arts). Akipa has produced six albums, has performed with the South Dakota Symphony and makes flutes in his shop following the traditional ways learned from Dakota elders.
Bryan Akipa handcrafts indigenous flutes in his basement workshop in Agency Village.
An Akipa flute begins with eastern red cedar branches gathered from the woods and valleys of Roberts County near his home. The branch is split into two pieces, hollowed out and then glued back together. An air chamber collects air before it flows through a narrow passage into the longer sound chamber, which includes five or six finger holes. A unique aspect is a tuning block, a small piece of wood that enters the tube through a small notch and is affixed using a leather strap. A carving adorns the foot end.
The indigenous flute was created to instrumentalize the many love songs that existed for centuries in Native culture. “All the musical genres in Dakota culture originated as a vocal composition,” Locke says. “For example, it’s a misnomer to say Indian drumming. There is no percussion tradition. The drum is used solely to accentuate the rhythm embedded in the vocal composition. Similarly, there is no distinct flute tradition. The flute only exists to instrumentalize the vocal tradition. That music is really a repository of beautiful and now somewhat archaic vocabulary, grammatical structures and sentence structures from the old language that flourished in the pre-reservation days and was still active in the early reservation days.”
Locke and Akipa also stress that the traditional indigenous flute is not the same as similar instruments that appeared in the late 20th century. For example, a flute that became popular in the 1980s is modeled after a Japanese shakuhachi and utilizes an entirely different tuning structure. Though it’s widely called a “Native American flute,” it’s not the traditional instrument. “The Native American flute is only designed for improvisational pieces and has nothing to do with any indigenous Native American music,” Locke says.
Today’s youth in South Dakota will likely not confuse the two because Locke and Akipa are willing to share their knowledge. Locke travels widely to schools, where he demonstrates the hoop dance and plays the flute. Using prefabricated kits with some assembly required, Locke helps students make flutes and then teaches them basic breathing exercises, fingering and a few simple songs. And Akipa believes he helped industrial arts students at Tiospa Zina Tribal School near Agency Village make 600 to 800 flutes over 10 to 15 years.
That’s dedication befitting an official state instrument of South Dakota.
