Kokopelli's Canyon

An homage to Kokopelli, dancing in firelight, in starlight, playing flute under the endless sky. Fertility god, trickster, sincere musician, wanderer, found all over the land, in shadow and in sun. Music played on Native cedar flutes.

Kokopelli is a powerful archetype for me as composer, music-maker, and as flute-player. I play mostly bamboo and wood flutes, including my small collection of cedar flutes made in Native American style and tuning.

While recording this music, the image came to me of a petroglyph of Kokopelli stepping out of his place in the canyon wall to perform a concert under starlight, in the natural, reverberant amphitheater of the canyon.

After a solo introduction, he is joined by other version of himself, emerging from other places on the canyon walls, to perform a concert: the music of life, of dance, of fertility, of endurance. Embrace the long years under the sky wheel that turns from sun blaze to cold starlight in the high desert. We endure, we live, and we dance a dance of quiet joy, just for being alive.

When the music returns to a single voice, Kokopelli returns to his stance in stone, a smile lingering behind in the last light.