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 Throughout
the western United States, there still are remote, uninhabited
wilderness areas of serenity and great beauty, especially forsaken
canyons where native tribes once lived, some of them thousands of years
ago. Musician Scott August, a multi-instrumentalist best-known for his
artistry in playing Native American wood flutes, has crafted a
recording, Lost Canyons, that captures the experience of spending a day
surrounded by nature in one of these secluded locations.
“There are thousands of seldom-visited canyons, especially in the
American Southwest area centered at the Four Corners where Arizona, New
Mexico, Utah and Colorado come together,” explains August. “Many of
these have Native American ruins, and some have rock art paintings or
drawings, from the Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo tribes as well as the
Navajos who all lived in the region a few hundred years ago, or even
from the ancient Anasazi culture that was around from 650 AD to 1250 AD.
If you have the privilege to visit one of these locations, it is a
special experience. When I play my flute there, and the sound mingles
with the wind and reverberates back off the canyon walls, there is a
deep connection to the past.”
August (A Native American Music Award winner) plays a wide variety of
native-style wood flutes from the common “fipple-style” (similar to a
recorder) to the more rare and difficult-to-play Anasazi rim-blown flute
(he is one of only a small handful of musicians to master this tricky
instrument). He also plays clay flutes similar to those used in ancient
Mexico. In addition, while August keeps the flute in the foreground, he
also is known for his subtle-yet-always-intriguing backing
instrumentation that gives his music a “tribal-techno” or
“ethnic-fusion” sound. Scott incorporates piano, guitar, synth and
numerous ethnic world-music instruments including kalimba, (African
thumb piano), udu (West African clay-pot drum), tabla (a double-drum
from India), oud (Mid-Eastern fretless lute), kenong and saron
(Indonesian gamelan kettle gongs), charango (tiny South American guitar
from the Andes Mountains), and cuatro (Latin American guitar).
August’s four CDs and DVD can be purchased online at CDbaby.com,
amazon.com, digital download locations such as iTunes and Napster, and
at his own website (cedarmesa.com). Lost Canyons is already Top 5 in
airplay on the national New Age Reporter radio charts.
The Lost Canyons CD emotionally and aurally paints a picture of a day
spent admiring nature’s majesty. The album begins by spotting the
“Morning Star” preceding sunrise, and the CD ends with the appearance of
the “Evening Star” (a lullaby signifying approaching night). In between
the listener can appreciate the environment of the canyon. Two
compositions celebrate birds (“Raven Dance” and “Swallows &
Nighthawks”). “Many times when I play flute music outdoors, whether at a
concert or alone in the wilderness, I have noticed how it seems to
attract birds. I have seen ravens lock their talons together and fall
hundreds of feet before breaking free and soaring off just before
hitting the ground.” Another pair of tunes focus on the weather
(“Thermals” and “Thunder on the Mesa”). “Thunderstorms in the Southwest
can be incredibly dramatic with the sound of thunder and the intense
bolts of lightening. Sometimes it is so hot the rain evaporates as it
falls.”
August also captures the grandeur of the multi-hued “Desert Skies” and
the whispering and lonely sounds of the wind on the Hopi-named
“Huukyangw (Wind).” In addition, the title tune, “Lost Canyons,” has the
epic sweep and monumental glory of the colorful Southwest. Although
Scott has visited many Indian ruins over the years, “Where Spirits
Dwell” was specifically inspired by the House of Many Hands pueblo ruin
in Mystery Valley where hundreds of hand prints and outlines of hands
are on the rock wall. He says, “When you sit next to an ancient ruin,
you can’t help but feel you are in a sacred place.” The recording
approaches conclusion with the driving “Chasing the Sun” (“trying to
find the best place to watch the sunset”) featuring a double-drone
flute, and “Twilight Canyon” (“that short transitional special time,
hovering between day and night”).
Lost Canyons is August’s fourth CD, preceded by Distant Spirits
(nominated for a Native American Music Award, NAMMY), Sacred Dreams (a
NAMMY winner!), and New Fire (another NAMMY nominee and a winner of the
prestigious Indian Summer Music Award). August also has released Ancient
Light, a DVD of 450 stunning photographs he took while exploring the
Southwest, with the soundtrack selected from the first three CDs plus
one new piece. August also headlined the Zion Native American Flute
Festival in 2006 and 2007, and the Central Coast Flute Festival in 2007.
Scott’s interest in music began as a small child. He was born in Los
Angeles and raised in Fullerton in Southern California. Scott’s father
played numerous instruments informally, Scott’s grandfather was a
professional classical violinist with a radio show in Los Angeles and
concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, and Scott’s great-grandfather led a folk
band. One of Scott’s earliest musical memories is a Stan Getz-Joao
Gilberto bossa nova album.
At age seven, Scott began studying cello and playing in school
orchestras. When he was nine he got a kalimba for Christmas which
awakened his love for ethnic sounds. His senior year in high school he
started to play piano and began practicing classical music at least six
hours a day for the next few years. He played in a few bands, but
primarily studied music which took him to the University of Southern
California as a composition student where he graduated with a Bachelor
of Music degree. As a child he grew up listening to both classical music
and popular music such as The Beatles, but as he got older he explored
progressive rock (Emerson Lake & Palmer, Yes, Genesis, King Crimson,
Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze).
At USC, August spent most of his free time in the electronic-music lab
where he learned to use synthesizers, sound sampling and processing, and
music interfacing with computers. His musical taste moved to
cutting-edge ambient and atmospheric artists such as Brian Eno, Harold
Budd and Steve Roach, “and their music became the roots of my
inspiration.” In college Scott began making recordings using piano,
synths, autoharp, kalimbas and guitar. At first he made cassettes and
later pressed a vinyl album of this music to submit it to radio
stations. It got airplay in Los Angeles on KCRW’s “Morning Becomes
Eclectic” show and KXLU’s “Alien Air Music” program, and on the New York
station WNYC. He met and spent time talking about music with Steve
Roach. In addition, August’s musical influences expanded to include
Steve Tibbetts (an eclectic fusion guitarist), Jon Hassell (a trumpeter
who merged electronics with world music sounds) and Peter Gabriel.
Brian Eno listened to some of August’s early recordings, told him how
visual the music was, and suggested Scott consider scoring. So August
submitted music to an ad agency and soon became an in-demand composer
for films, videos, commercials and TV shows. His clients have included
NASA, Lexus, Chevrolet, HBO, Nabisco and Minolta. One of many projects
he has done for The Discovery Channel was the soundtrack for the film
they showed repeatedly at an IMAX-style theater in the Olympic Village
in Atlanta.
August discovered Native American flute music while visiting pueblos in
New Mexico in 1996. He fell in love with the scenery and culture of the
Southwest, bought his first flute in 1998, and started recording flute
music the next week. In 2004 he began researching Anasazi flutes. “The
ones I play are a re-creation of several flutes that were dug up in
Arizona in the late 1920s, and historians believe these types of flutes
were played by the Anasazi Indians 750 to more than 1300 years ago.
These flutes have a different construction and are played differently
than more modern Native American flutes.”
“The Lost Canyons concept for the new CD has several meanings. Some
canyons are lost because no one goes there. The meaning can include
ancient cultures that lived there thousands of years ago. The title also
can be symbolic of places on our planet we have lost to encroaching
civilization. That, in turn, makes you realize how humankind has become
out-of-touch with nature, and how much we have all lost in the process.”
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