Feather on the Wind

Strangely enough, Golana didn't start life as a Native American flute player. Her started out as a guy named Scott Cunningham and his music tastes ran more to the Eagles than to traditional Native American music.

It was only after he matured a bit and began exploring his Cherokee roots that he adopted the stage name "Golana" (the Cherokee word for Raven) and began experimenting with a variety of wood flutes.

With Feather in the Wind, Golana synthesizes the two parts of his nature perfectly. The instrumentation for each track is kept simple. No more than two or three instruments every come into play in a single song. However, the choice of thse instruments and the styles they adopt is carefully thought out and can strike an amazingly solid emotional chord.

"Imagine a feather being tossed out, traveling along on the winds," Golana says. "Often in my own life, I have felt like the feather, floating along without direction or guidance, but if I look closely, I can see that every moment has moved to this point, and if just one thing had been different, there might not have been this music, this beautiful gift in my life."

The music is not strictkly speaking Native American. It's flavored by the Native American sound, but it goes beyond certain limitation of the traditional form. It's more melodic and a touch more lyrically complicated. It's also backed by acoustic guitar which has a distinctly Latin style. Even that's not quite right. The guitar is more New Age flamenco than traditional Latin guitar.

In the final analysis, what you get is something that ... to be perfectly honest ... is much more commercial than true Native American music. White people can get into it.

That's not a criticism. I'm sure Golana's goal is to make his music accessible to non-Native Americans. It's a notbel goal and he achieves it admirably here. This is one of the most enjoyable albums of its kind I've run into.

If you'd like, you can hear online samples of Feather on the Wind at Amazon.com.