I’ve been making flutes for over 30 years, but it is quite recent that I have a regular supply of Arundo donax -sometimes referred to as “oboe cane” -to work with. I have always planned to have my own stand of bamboo, but the way this Cane grows is less intrusive than many kinds of bamboo. The walls are thin, so even a small diameter has a proportionally large resonant chamber, and it is easy to work with. I think that’a part of the reason the Sui instruments are typically made of Arundo from the Middle East. I does not matter that I grow this grass in Texas! The quailty appears essentially the same. Orundo is a fast-growing plant that has minimum requirements from soil or water. For the Native Americans of this region, flutes were typically made from large reeds before the now generic Plains Style flutes made from Cedar.
It is useful to point out that the flutes now so widely appearing in Powwow circuits were probably not the kind the ancestors of the current population made. As far as I know, it was largely due to the efforts of Ben Hunt, writer and illustrator of some popular craft books of the 1950s that established the current tradition.
Native Americans often complain about the appropriation of cultural heritage, but many I’ve encountered are only vaguely aware of the European influences on their own conditioning, so an endless cycle appears to me, of them chasing the tail of our own cultural identity unaware of the European influences. To try and PURIFY our tastes and habits to conform to some ideal we have of who we should be is, to me, pure madness.
