I have gained a reputation among my colleagues as someone that does not hesitate or fear to speak of the undercurrents among them. This is not always a well-received posture and is often misunderstood (among my colleagues), but I strongly believe my unconventional stance is a necessary ingredient to the overall health of the pan flute. One of the most revealing (and, I admit, amusing) aspects of such work is the opportunity to witness the reactions of my often defensive colleagues, who are quick to respond to me (in their wearingly predictable infantile fashion) by saying, "You are only a frustrated artist", "You are jealous", "You are an instigator of trouble", and other such things. These childish responses (more indicative of knuckle-draggers than enlightened professionals), are delivered with such a strident edge, it is plain that, hoping to thus avert scrutiny of these matters, my detractors seek to accuse me of the very attributes from which they themselves suffer. To these things, I now simply reply, "Does this look like the schedule of a frustrated, jealous artist who uses all his time only to instigate trouble?" In the last forty years, several things have happened in the world of the pan flute:
1) In 1972, Zamfir signed his first major recording contract in the Western world, with the Philips company.
This event marked the beginning of Zamfir's highly-advertised tenure in the Western world, as the first panflutist to attain a high degree of fame and success (critical and financial) in the Western mass media market. Zamfir's contract with Philips also began the "pan flute / big profit" association.
2) In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a different type of panflutist was making their presence known - the sikuri.
In the case of the sikuris, the panflutists and folk ensembles of the Andes regions of South America, the vast majority have their origins among the native peoples of the Andes, who have been marginalized by the various regimes in their region for centuries. Living in villages apart from their European-descended countrymen, the sikuris were very often raised in poverty, and were isolated from the possibilities to be found outside the Andes. With changes in government policy and increased world awareness of the plight of the natives of the Andes, however, the sikuris began to break out of their centuries-old cycle of poverty. Starting at the grassroots level (street and market performances, festivals, etc.) the sikuris began to perform publicly in the USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Within a few years, the sikuris moved into the mass media market, though maintaining a strong grassroots edge in terms of self-promotion and distribution of their recordings. The appearance of the sikuris represented the rise to prominence of a different, distinct, and highly diverse pan flute tradition, entirely independent of the traditions surrounding the Romanian nai.
3) In 1989, Communism fell in eastern Europe, in Romania with the death of Nicolae Ceausescu.
The overwhelming majority of Romanian naists grew up under the strictures of Communism, and were thus isolated from the the Western world and its freedoms. With the collapse of Communism in Romania, many more Romanian naists (pan flute players) that were previously unknown to the West suddenly found an entire new world open to them - a world of increased opportunity and affluence, but also a world of increased competition.
4) In the late 1990s, panflutists began to network and promote themselves online in increasingly large numbers.
The advent of the Internet gave previously unknown panflutists hailing from virtually every corner of the globe the ability to network, self-promote, and compete in the global mass media market, as well as achieve financial success on a scale previously undreamed of. The days of the monopolization of the pan flute by prominent players such as Zamfir swiftly became a thing of the past.
In both cases (Romanian naists and Andean sikuris), the same result came to pass: they suddenly found the doors of economic opportunity open to them. In a remarkably short period of time, the pan flute, in the hands of sikuris and naists alike, found itself transported from its various folk traditions to the awareness of the musical mainstream. With the newly accessible mass media, however, also came frictions among many panflutists, generated by the competition that is the heartbeat of a free market. The sikuris, formerly denied knowledge of the world by segregation and poverty, and often the objects of much admiration by their villages and towns, were suddenly confronted with the fact that there were panflutists in the world besides themselves. Similarly, the Romanian naists, having been conditioned by the Communist system (whether they acknowledge it or not), were often unprepared to cope with the realities of a free market, where everyone has opportunity, everyone can succeed, and no one has the right to silence anyone else based upon personal opinions, private interests, or differences. Faced with this situation, many panflutists developed strong tendencies towards secrecy, mutual suspicions, jealousies, and even national origin biases ("Romania is the 'main land' of the pan flute", to cite a blatant example). Something on the level of saying, "Brazil is the homeland of soccer." It makes me want to point out, "Is that why Brazil got their butts kicked at the 2006 World Cup?" Even the most famous panflutist in the world, Zamfir, has openly expressed his frustration and arrogance with aspiring panflutists in his biography, "Binecuvintare Si Blestem" (Blessing and a Curse).
This volatile brew of envy, bias, and competing self-interests was made even more acidic when the money began to flow into the hands of previously unknown panflutists. Suddenly, any unfamiliar panflutist or pan flute maker (usually non-Romanian or non-Andean) who profited and prospered was accused of being a shameless profiteer, who does not care about the instrument. A notable aspect of this viewpoint is the fact that the panflutist with the highest degree of recognition and the most numerous album sales, Zamfir, is strangely exempt from being branded in this way. In fact, I was recently contacted by a student of Zamfir, who declared, "We must protect the pan flute's good reputation against the people who only want to make money with it." I sarcastically replied, "So, we should protect it from Zamfir, too?" An amusing encounter, but it starkly demonstrates the double standard that is existent among many panflutists today, naists and sikuris alike, where financial success with the pan flute is concerned. So, according to this outlook, non-Romanian or non-Andean panflutists don't care about the instrument, they only care about making money with it. This sentiment is generated in part by deep-seated fears of artistic and personal inadequacy, but also by frustrated envy, stemming from a desire to both possess the success of their more successful colleagues, and to deny their colleagues the opportunity to which they feel they alone are entitled. I would like to put some questions to any of my colleagues who are in possession of this sentiment:
Since when is it an evil thing to earn money doing what you love?
If earning a good living as a panflutist is so evil, why is it OK for Zamfir to do so?
Is Zamfir (or any other high-profile panflutist) required to give up his success to prove he loves the pan flute?
Should Ronaldo return all the money he has earned and live in a favela to prove that he loves soccer? Should all doctors return all the money they ever earned to prove they love to be healers? Should Stephen King donate all his book profits to charity to prove he loves being an author? Is Yo-Yo Ma required to relinquish all his career profits to prove he loves the cello? Does Luciano Pavarotti need to give up his money to prove he loves opera, or singing as a tenor?
I could go on like this forever, but anyone with sense would understand my point. Nowadays, when I encounter any colleague that implies that I am somehow immoral and damaging to the pan flute by earning my living with it, I simply reply, "If you believe it is immoral to earn a profit with your pan flute skills, then stop performing for a fee, stop advertising your services, and never sell another pan flute as long as you live! If you don't think you should do these things, then guess what? Neither should I."
It all comes down to selfish arrogance, folks. So, those who cling to this outlook prefer to divide the pan flute, and any opportunity it may generate, into a few different categories of entitlement, a type of mentality-generated caste system: the "Zamfir category", the "Romanian category", the "Romanian-approved category", and the "shameless profiteer" category. In effect, anyone in the last category is required by anyone in the first three categories to be content with the pan flute as an interesting hobby. Above all, the "shameless profiteers" who only call themselves panflutists (according to the members of the first three categories) must never fail to bow down to the members of the first three categories, and must always acknowledge and maintain the eternal superiority of their "betters". Truly a medieval and servile philosophy, and clearly out of vogue in the mind and spirit of any enlightened individual (something which all the members of the first three categories imagine themselves to be).
A matter of the utmost importance for any performing panflutist today is this: audiences will view the pan flute through the lens of its players' personalities. If people see arrogance, intolerance, and exclusion, most will not be very interested in learning more about the pan flute. The public wants performers with an open-minded persona. There is no escape from this reality today. Also, too many panflutists have made themselves inaccessible and aloof to the public, and the pan flute's image has suffered accordingly. People today want the opposite. In the USA, Zamfir's commercials have done nothing to improve the instrument's modern profile. On the contrary, Zamfir's advertising campaign, notable for its over-the-top and pretentious TV ads, has made the pan flute cause for smirking, and the butt of jokes, for the previous 25 years (listen to an example). I know, some will say, "Well, these are ignorant people anyway. What do they know?" I should point out that those "ignorant people" belong to the public, and what they do or don't know is not what's at issue here. The point is this: the public's perception of the pan flute (and panflutists) will either make or break the instrument, and the careers of its performers. In view of this fact, it behooves every panflutist to never leave the public's sentiments and opinions out of the equation.
So, we have seen and established the actual legacy that the panflutists to whom this page is dedicated are passing on to posterity - arrogance, selfishness, pretension, prejudice, and the like. Are these the people whose example young panflutists should admire and follow? In the words of my Lakota ancestors: "They speak with a forked tongue." To this observation, I will add the final sentence of my history page: "The pan flute is not a thing of one person, one name, one people, or one nation - it is a thing of all humankind". It is time for all of those of my colleagues who cling to their biases, jealousies, intolerance, and judgementalism to realize this, to include rather than exclude, and to treat all panflutists as equally worthy of recognition, equally deserving of reaping a worldly material harvest, and equally essential to the survival, enrichment, and mystique of one of the great musical treasures of the earth - the pan flute.
