Now I'm coming to my Dryad Flute in C by Jon Sherman. This was one of the early flutes I got when I started playing last summer. I was looking around at the various makers online (using the Cedarmesa links, Charles Littleleaf links, and others), somehow I came across the Dryad webpage and was in love!

I looked over the Gallery of flutes, and heard Jon play (the dude can play the flute), I knew I had to have one. I wrote Jon and Lindy the following email:

What drew me to the flutes were the natural look to them. Those with angles, bark, moss - really beautiful. Hard to know whether the deep, dark finished ones with lots of bark are my favorite, or the grayish ones with green moss that look like they could still be attached to a tree! The "Elven Lord grabs fallen branch and magically transforms it into flute" look is my favorite! Bark, lots of it, either deep, rich, dark colors, or very natural looking bark etc; the less shaving (even for tone holes) the better! The thick walls, sometimes with rings, are beautiful.

Lindy wrote back with:

Okay, I've got you on the list for one Elven Lord magically transformed flute! :-)

And boy did they deliver! Below you'll see the photos and sound files for the Peppertree in C they sent me. Jon is even better at showcasing his flutes, so you should first check out photos and his playing it here:
http://www.dryadflutes.com/201Peppertreeinc.html

From Jon Sherman's description:
The wonderful bark has been left on this unsplit California Peppertree (Schinus molle) branch flute, the darker, chocolate colored under-layer exposed at the tone holes. The air chamber and blow hole were bored into the larger of the forked branches at the north end of the flute, making this a unique and fun flute to play. Measuring 16 1/2" in length and concert tuned to a sweet, high c minor pentatonic modes 1 & 4, playing five upper octave notes as heard in the sound sample, (the fourth and fifth upper octave notes achieved by half/holing the sixth tone hole) The whole flute is finely finished with all knots and knot checks inlaid with crushed Sleeping Beauty turquoise. Elk lacing with Sleeping Beauty turquoise and brass beads holds the bird to the nest. The branch for this flute was gathered at the Nottingham Center for the Arts, where the flute was made.

Can't say enough good things about this flute. It's a work of natural art, in appearance and in function. The sound is gorgeous, and you read it right: FIVE upper octave notes (I can get the first 4 ok - the fifth is hit or miss, usually miss! Jon just effortlessly nails it in the sound sample on his site). It's even got a minor warble if you push it right on the fundamental. So much packed into such a small flute! I've included three sound files: an improv, the minor warble, and a rendition of Mercedes' Lullaby from Pan's Labyrinth. This has some background chords etc from Garageband, so not pure flute. Also, there is sadly one note that I can't quite find in the scale as I played it, so forgive me that one! (Also, as anyone who knows the film, it's beautiful, but tragic, so skip if you don't like sad songs).

EDIT: Almost forgot to add: the rumors are true. The hole in the SAC (covered by the lacing holding the block down) is an ingenious solution to wet out. I have two Dryad flutes (next one, well next!), and I have never wetted them out. Ever. And I have definitely wetted out several other flutes. Outside of a ceramic from Meadowlark and John Kulias, it's hard to beat the Sherman Dryad flutes for extended playability.

Hi Erec,
What a wonderful flute! There is a special connection that Jon makes with his flutes. I have played many of them and there is just something special that happens when you can create music from such a rustic looking branch!
Be Spirited,
John

Erec,

Very nice flute. Jon's flutes are consistently awesome. I feel fortunate to own 1.

Art

Ahhh Hahhhh!!!! So you are the one that got that Gorgeous Peppertree flute! Man I Love the way that Peppertree bark looks! I think I like it just about the best of all the ones Jon has made.....maybe! Then again I love the looks of all of his flutes!!! Got to get one someday!!!! Cheers.....Ed

Delicious!!!

I'm baffled that I somehow managed to miss both of the great reviews that you submitted last spring on your way cool earthy branch flutes, but I really enjoyed reading about your appreciation and admiration of your Dryad flutes.

Beautiful. Jon makes some of the best flutes around...I found 2 small branches near my home and Jon did his magic and turned them into wonderful flutes. A high C too. I just love the way his instruments sound.

And yes, Jon can seriously play the flute. If you have not listened to his CD's, I highly recommend them.

wow, that is beautiful. Peppertree? The kind peppercorns grow on? I don't think I've ever seen one.

Love the warble, nice flute!

Marsha, you sweet lady, thank you for resurrecting this thread, gives me a chance to thank Eric for the nice review and everyone else for their positive comments! Sorry I missed this first time around, my wife Lindy was in the hospital shortly before Eric posted this, so I needed to disappear for awhile to focus on her health.

Jim, here’s a link to the species of pepper tree the branch was made from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schinus_molle Besides the medicinal and other properties that wikipedia lists, this tree has shamanic uses as well. It’s become an important part of Mexican traditional medicine, its branches used to "sweep" a person's body and "cast away all bad luck" and the "evil eye". This ceremony is called "una barrida con pirul" and is common practice in many rural communities in Mexico today.

Health and Blessings to Everyone,
Jon

Oh, a pink peppercorn... I know this one! We have them all over. I'm going to have to keep my eyes open for something.
I'm curious, you said this tree has medicinal and shamanic uses. Do you know of, or can you recommend, any reliable authors on this? Or websites? Everytime I turn around I learn something cool about this wood or that wood... I'm wondering if there is a good book on plants and trees and their healing properties, etc...
Thanks!

Jim, "magic and medicine of plants" is a good one and i plan on picking up "secret life of plants" any day now

There are lots of books and websites on plants and trees and their healing properties but you have to be careful. Many of them just parrot back a few myths and aren't based on first-hand knowledge. Most focus on plants and trees that don't grow in my part of the world, so they're not particularly helpful to me. It is rare for shamanic uses to be found in written form and the "use" is subject to the interpretation of the author. Few authors have the non-linear insight to discover the true shamanic "use". They can only go by the appearance of the use, or what they are told - which is unlikely to be "the rest of the story." If you really want to learn about shamanic uses of plants and trees, I'd recommend finding someone with true knowledge - preferably local. They're not likely to be on a website anywhere. If you keep your heart open and your path requires you to know, you will find them.

Jon's info on pepper trees fits with my experience in Mexico. I continue to be impressed with the depth of his knowledge.

Peace.
Coatlique

Coatlique, I agree with much of what you've written. Not sure about that last sentence though, so I think I'd better quit while I'm ahead, or before I say something quite unimpressive. (My wife could tell you all about that!) I have no pretense to be any kind of shaman, it's not really my path. The best I can do is learn how to be in a good relationship with the trees that lend their branches to me so I can make flutes. The more I know about those trees, the better off my flutes will be.

~ Jon

Didn't mean to imply you were a shaman, my friend. Just that you have access to some darned good information.

I had run across "pirul" while I was in Oaxaca but hadn't made the connection with California pepper tree until I read your post. It was being used much as you said.

For the record, I am not a shaman either. I've just had the privilege of traveling with one to some very interesting places. I've learned enough to know I don't have a clue what he's doing most of the time.

Peace.
Coatlique

That is why I asked you guys, most of the books I've seen so far were clearly not well written, but just parrotted from the same source.

I haven't found a good one. The local ethnobotany teachers don't go much deeper than the parroted written sources but at least they have a local focus. The shaman I know works with whatever is available. Some plants lend themselves more easily to particular uses than others, but in the end it's intuition and intent that counts. Reminds me of a certain pvc debate on another thread

A good source of Spanish/English plant names would be more helpful to me than anything.

Coatlique

Jim, are you sure what you have "all over" in Florida isn’t Brazillian Pepper? Schinus terebinthifolius? http://plants.ifas.ufl.edu/node/405 It seems to be quite an invasive tree there, from what I’ve been reading. It may be an important difference, as that link states: “People sensitive to poison ivy, oak or sumac may also be allergic to Brazilian pepper tree because it also has the potential to cause dermatitis to those with sensitive skin.”

Jim,
DO NOT use that wood from those pepper plants. They are indeed Brazilian Pepper, they're all over Florida, a very aggressive intruder and as Jon said, very nasty wood, causing rashes. I think this wood could seriously hurt a player not to mention a maker.
Done a lot of cutting and digging of this plant and in spite of the Florida muggies wore long sleeves and pants and still got the itchies.
Kuz

Oh... Thanks for the heads up, I will definitly avoid them now.

Coatlique,

I didn't read much of a debate in that other thread (if I'm reading between your lines correctly) about the use of PVC for flutes. I think it mostly reflected a consensus in the flute community that's open minded and accepting to a wide variety of materials, as well as methods, techniques, tunings and playing styles.

But as evidenced by the hazards of using Brazilian Peppertree, some materials may work against the best intent of the flute maker or player. I think it's important to accept that a tree also has an intent. A big part of environmental imbalance is a result of the imposition of human will onto the world with the idea that’s what the worlds for. A taking dominion over, rather than a participation with.

So it's not just the will of the flute maker that's in play here, it's the will of the wood and of the maker together, in cooperation. I've often heard makers say "Well, I guess the wood (or branch) just didn't want to be a flute." Now there's been times when I've been tempted to blame it on the branch, after I failed to find it's voice, but the problem was probably my own inexperience that failed the flute. There may also have been times when the will of the wood didn't want to cooperate with me, for whatever reason. I think different tree species have subtly different intents, depending on their genetic makeup and native ecological niche. And within the same species, individual trees have unique personalities formed by their location and history. Whether any of this holds water, there's much territory to be explored or rediscovered by flute makers on this subject, beyond how the purely physical properties of wood reflect the audible portion of the sound wave.

Within this way of looking at things, I wonder what the intent of PVC is?

~ Jon

I talked to a gentleman at the Rhythms festival who told me he was a storyteller, and would always try and make a batch of PVC flutes to take when he talked to a classroom of children. He said it was great to let all the kids have a flute to take home, and he used PVC because it was so cheap and he could mass produce a classroom batch relatively quickly.

So perhaps the purpose of PVC is to introduce a flute to the children so they can learn about them and come to appreciate the value of a good wooden flute before they actually get one of their own???

The purpose of pvc, is to provide an inexpensive, readily available material, that can be used for flutes, to introduce folks to the flute, and its magic.

The wood comes later.

JJ and Rick,

I wasn't asking the "purpose" behind some flute makers use of PVC. That purpose may be a very positive one. I was wondering about the intent of PVC itself, within the context of my previous post. If that can be seen, apart from its cheap price, which I think is kept artificially low by privatizing the profits and socializing the environmental and health costs, then a better decision can be made by the flute maker whether to use it or not.

~ Jon

Oh, I see where you were going...
I'm not sure... a tree, and therefore the branch was once alive, and would definitly have some form of spirit, and so perhaps a purpose. I have had some branches and pieces of wood that really seemed to want to sing... they were so easy to make it was like the wood co-operated as best it could to help.

PVC... that's a collections of chemicals that never lived to begin with... so could something completely inanimate have a purpose??? I don't see how.
Myself personally I don't really like the stuff.

Your flute is magnificent.
Treble is soft, the sound is charming!

Just saw this again! I tried to play the old files and get the Quicktime "?" now! Can't play my own uploads!

Still love this flute. As for intent etc, I try not to anthropomorphize nature (and I realize Jon wasn't necessarily doing that with the word "intent"; he makes clear that he has a lot of natural biological thought in his words, niche, adaptation, etc). I frankly cannot say I have made any kind of effective synthesis of the sense of the spiritual and the rational mind. It's too easy to rationally and scientifically deconstruct nearly any "spiritual" proposal/explanation etc, and so easy to use reason to also deconstruct rationality itself! I am left with a sense of the spiritual that is uniquely personal to me, yet clearly related in many ways to that others describe, a clear idea that most human constructs to explain the world seem to fall apart upon close analysis, and a belief that in the end we all stand at the shore of a vast ocean rather dumbfounded and in awe (if we don't provide simple answers and close our eyes).

Kind of like making a flute. There are rules and science and consequences for ignoring those, yet in the end the purpose is to produce an instrument that has a totally irrational yet significant power over my experience of existence. There is nothing objectively meaningful in music that I think anyone could establish. Yet music seems as deep as life. All due to acoustical physics, and God's hand in supporting the existence of atoms and laws?

Head starts spinning. I think the "answers" are too big for our (at least my) little mind!

Sometimes a good idea to just silence the voices . Believe me, I struggle.

HI Erec,

I’m very glad to read that you still love the Peppertree flute! For me, that’s far more fulfilling than whether or not we find agreement in words. I do try to bring into this forum the same good intent I bring to my flute making, but words are so limited sometimes and their intent frequently misunderstood. There was a time when I had a stronger belief in the poetic power of words, but that muse became somewhat silent for me, I think when I found better poetic expression (for me) through the crafting of branch flutes.

I do see the poetry in your words though, in expressing the inexpressible. No "little mind" you have to write: “in the end we all stand at the shore of a vast ocean rather dumbfounded and in awe (if we don't provide simple answers and close our eyes).” But do we have to close our eyes to see intent in the non-human? Is that really anthropomorphic? For me, that’s an opening of the eyes to the reality around me. To not recognize that nature is filled with countless non-human intents that compose the complex web of life allowing for our own human existence, to think that somehow intent is exclusive to human will -- isn’t that a bit anthropocentric? Isn’t it eye-opening to recognize that unless that Peppertree, whose branch became your flute, had at the very least an intent to live, to sprout up and out of it’s seed, send its roots down in the earth and reach its branches up toward the light, your flute could never have existed?

I also see in that tree an intent informed by millions of years of co-evolution with the other living and non-living things of its habitat. By the intent of bees to make honey from it’s flowers and birds to make nests in its branches, eat it’s fruit and distribute its seeds, by the intent of mycorrhizal fungi to be in a symbiotic relationship with it’s roots and the intent of the earth to hold those roots. This acceptance and “creation” of a tree over the eons of its evolution by the natural community is why I trust it as the source for my flutes. I do think that even inorganic, man made materials like PVC have an intent, given to it by the motives of its creators and manufacturers. But did a bird have any say in it?

~ Jon

Well, I think something deeply human is to try to make sense of things, and it is part of why we have come to understand what we have. Even learned to make flutes and play them! The first player was a maker....

But our hunger for answers in the face of certain failure I think drives us too often to either chase our tail or, to avoid that, to plant a flag and say "here are the answers!"

I think like the Brazilian Peppertree warning, and countless others we all experience in many areas of life, is that the universe has infinite ways of not fitting in our little boxes.

Our thoughts on life can be as profoundly unique as how we individually interpret music.
I frequently enjoy getting deeply and totally lost in music, . . . . and having no answers!

Hi Jon,

Believe me, I'm not at all saying we are disagreeing! I would have to have secure knowledge of something like "intent" (meaning, even at root, that I understood what you meant by that, or even what I think I mean by it!). My bias is to shy away from trusting too much the risk of reading our human biases into nature. It seems so often that people, myself included, understand the world by seeing in it ourselves and not the "other." While some of this is just basic empathy, often I get the frustrated feeling in many conversations that much is conceptualized in a very anthropocentric fashion.

So, I believe there are forces in nature, in life, that have "purpose" etc, but I try to be careful to realize that often "intent" "purpose" "desire" etc, for myself anyway, always come with human psychologic baggage, imagry, emotions, motivations.

So I'm not saying trees and branches don't have "intent", but that "intent" may be more alien to our human "intents" than we think, and subject to misunderstanding. I remember reading a science fiction novellla - StarMaker - where even the great balls of hydrogen called stars were given "intent" and "purpose", very very alien to our minds and hearts, but no less real, no less able to impact the universe and ourselves.

Erec,

It's actually a valid hypothesis in science, that the Earth itself is a living organism with intent. It's not sicence fiction at all. Of course, traditional native cultures know the truth of it. We may all be an expression of that intent, that life force of "Gaia". But how to differentiate the human "psychological baggage, imagery, emotions, motivations" from the spirit of a tree? Or the spirit of anything? There's a wonderful koan from Dogen Zengi that's better than anything I could write:

"That the self advances and confirms the myriad things is called delusion.
That the myriad things advance and confirm the self is enlightenment."