Red Beads (Makoché Music, 2005)
On his website Joseph Fire Crow is quoted as saying, “You can teach someone how to play the flute, but you can’t teach them how to make it sing.” While he might be correct, there can be no mistaking the fact that Joseph Fire Crow makes a flute sing. On his latest CD, Red Beads, Joseph Fire Crow proves his mastery over the flute in fourteen magical tracks. His flute soars on the updrafts of the wind, along the winding waters and through enchanted rituals.
From the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana, Fire Crow’s previous offerings include Fire Crow, Cheyenne Nation and Legend of the Warrior. On Red Beads he explores the oral and musical traditions of his people along with vocals and spoken word by Elva Stands In Timber. “As People” begins the CD where Fire Crow is joined by a spoken word section by Stands In Timber. It is a prayer and so much more with a quiet simplicity and soulful reverence. “Sundance Horses” is another remarkable piece with Fire Crow adding hand drumming to his remarkable flute playing. “Song for Grandfathers,” “Ne-me’hotåtse” and “Eagle Boy” are three more outstanding pieces with Fire Crow’s bright notes carrying the listener to far off places in another time.
If all this wonderful music isn’t enticement enough, the enhanced CD comes with two videos. The first is an instructional video with Joseph Fire Crow about the flute he plays and its construction and the second is a Red Beads interview about the CD and song construction. Fans of Joseph Fire Crow are to delight in his new recording, the interviews and the chance to hear him make the flute sing.
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
