Page 78 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2018

A Toot to
A Toot to

the Flute,
the Flute,

Fife and
Fife and

Quills
Quills

Othar "Otha" Turner manufacturing a fife out of a piece of bamboo cane. Photo: Othar Turner making fife image 10 in the William R. Ferris Collection #20367, Southern Folklife
Collection, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
By Regi Oliver Afro-American slaves learned fife and/or drum skills from
The flute, fife and quills are all members of the woodwind playing in militia units. They adopted the tradition into their
family of instruments. The flute is one of the oldest and most music of African origins, developing into the genre of black
widely used wind instruments. Originally made from mammoth fife and drum blues, which has been documented in parts of
tusk and animal bones, the oldest found flutes date as far back Mississippi, Tennessee and Georgia. One of the most famous
as 60,000 years, demonstrating that this musical tradition artists of the fife and drum blues tradition was Othar “Otha”
was developed early on in modern human existence. Turner, who played on homemade cane fifes during his goat-
Flute tones are lyrical and sweet, and the flute’s pitch and roasting parties and other community events. First recordings
flexible timbre allow for instantaneous expressive control – of Mississippi fife and drum music were made in 1942 of
which is well suited to the blues. When I grew up, a band was multi-instrumentalist Sid Hemphill and his band. Other well-
not really considered a band unless it consisted of a minimum known musicians of the fife and drum tradition include Ed
of four horns. Every saxophone player was expected to and Lonnie Young, the Mitchel Brothers, Napolian Strickland,
double on at least flute and clarinet, and vice versa. I heard Hemphill’s granddaughter Jessie Mae Hemphill and Turner’s
the flute in various contexts. Big bands, orchestras, concert granddaughter Shardé Thomas who inherited leadership of
bands, rock and pop bands all utilized the flute sound at some his Rising Star Fife and Drum Band.
point in their repertoire. If you really think about it, there’s not The quills are a type of pan flute, an early American folk
a genre of modern secular music that hasn’t employed the woodwind assumed to originate from Africa and played by
gorgeous and hypnotic sounds of the flute. Afro-American slaves in the south dating back to the late
The fife, one of the most important musical instruments 1700s/early 1800s. One of the earliest recordings of the
in America’s Colonial period, can still be heard today in quills was in 1926 by Mississippi artist Big Boy Cleveland. A
some Appalachian folk music. The fife is louder and more year later, Henry “Ragtime Texas” Thomas began recording
shrill than the flute due to its narrower bore. As early as the 24 sides for Vocalion Records. These recordings are some
17 century and prominently in the 18 and 19 centuries, of my favorite examples of quill playing and techniques.
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76 Blues Festival Guide 2018