To hear Karl Casias play one of his Native American style flutes you’d never guess he’s self-taught and has only been playing for a few years. The music of the flute is mystical and somehow familiar, as if you’ve heard it long ago, but can’t quite place where. The instrument itself is ancient, crossing all eras and cultures of mankind, and dating back to the Anasazi in North America in the 600s, according to most historians.
Native American style flutes are simple in design, with a mouth hole on one end, a “dam” or plug that slows the air flow, and holes that, when covered with the fingers, produce different notes. While simple in design, the instrument’s music has been described as calming, spiritual, and healing. The length and width of the branch or stick used to create the flute determines the musical key. Variations abound, including flutes with double barrels, carvings and decoration, shapes and styles.
“Just playing music is so beneficial, even if you’re bad at it. It’s just good for you.”
~ Karl Casias, River Rhythms Owner
Casias’s introduction to flute playing was coincidental. A long time friend and fishing client who is also a jazz saxophone player was visiting one day. Casias had a flute he’d picked up at a garage sale that had been sitting in the house for years.
“He came in one time and saw it there, and he just picked it up. After about four tries he was playing it, making some cool music.”
His friend showed him how to play the instrument, explained that it was based on a minor pentatonic scale, and encouraged him to “just mess with it for awhile.”
“I started doing that, and pretty soon I kind of taught myself how to play. Once I did that, and I was actually making tunes, I looked at it — a piece of wood with some holes poked in it — and said, ‘I need to figure out how to make one of these things.’”
Casias watched YouTube videos to get an idea of how to create a flute on his own, and got started. The first one he created that “actually made a noise” further sparked his interest, both in creating flutes and teaching others how to make and play them. His friend and now wife, Sherri, made her own flute with Casias’s instruction. That flute won a blue ribbon at the county fair.
From there, Casias started buying flutes from all over the world, as well as making his own. Via the internet, he has established connections with flute makers from all over the world.
“I’ve come to find out all over the planet people have this desire to know their native roots,” Casias said. “That’s a really neat aspect of this. It’s worldwide.”
The global representation is obvious in Casias’s River Rhythms shop, inside The Heritage in the Hugus Building at Sixth and Main, which features flutes — and other unusual instruments, from ocarinas to hand drums — from Israel, Jakarta, the Philippines, and other countries, as well as some of Casias’s handmade flutes, jewelry and other items. Sherri helps Casias set up and design the displays. “She was so instrumental in getting this to this point. I put up two flute racks and get distracted. It would definitely not be this without her.”
Casias’s latest musical interest is in a didgeridoo, a wind instrument indigenous to Australia, that he describes as the hardest instrument he’s attempted to play, and succeeded. “It’s not really an instrument, it’s more like this weird cosmic thing, but ultra hard to learn.”
The 35-year Meeker resident worked many years at the Meeker Sanitation District, has been a fly fishing guide and operated a fly fishing shop out of his home for several years. Currently, along with River Rhythms, Casias is a caretaker for a young quadriplegic man with cerebral palsy, from whom he gleans life lessons: “They know more, literally, because they’re more engaged in the now. They don’t think future. When they love you, it’s just sincere, it’s real,” he said.
Sincere. Real. Now. Much like the music from the ancient flute.
Karl Casias demonstrates flute-playing in his River Rhythms store inside The Heritage at Sixth and Main Street in Meeker. LUCAS TURNER PHOTOS
