Music

Flute player debuts 26th album at show

John Two-Hawks, a Grammy Award-nominated flute player, performs Sunday in North Little Rock.
John Two-Hawks, a Grammy Award-nominated flute player, performs Sunday in North Little Rock.

On his new album, American Indian flute player John Two-Hawks tells the story of how he found his "hidden medicine."

The Eureka Springs resident says it is something we all have; he describes it as what a person discovers about himself when "courage meets fear."

John Two-Hawks

7 p.m. Sunday, Hilton Garden Inn, 4100 Glover Lane, North Little Rock

Tickets: $20 at the door, $15 advance, $55 VIP. Advance tickets at johntwohawks.com

Info: (501) 749-1320, (479) 253-1732

Two-Hawks, who performs a concert Sunday at the Hilton Garden Inn in North Little Rock, says he drew on his own spiritual journey to create new music for his album, which he titled Hidden Medicine.

"My experience is the springboard," he says. "It's about finding the courage to face fear and the things that come from outside to hurt us. It's about surviving, healing and, in our triumph, discovering this great power I call hidden medicine. It gives you this great ability to help others and make the world better. The things that cause us the most hardship is where we find our hidden medicine."

Two-Hawks says part of his journey was accepting that "it was time to stop complaining about the bad things that happened to me. Spirit reminded me that those things had given me an insight, a perspective I would otherwise not have had. They caused me pain, but I couldn't carry around this 'woe is me' mentality. I had to finally own those things. They became my hidden medicine."

The new album, his 26th, is the Grammy and Emmy Award-nominated artist's exploration of a new musical direction: flute harmonics.

"I've been thinking about the approach for a while, where I play several flutes on a song in the recording studio to create harmonies," he says. "I've done that a few times over the years, but it is a conscious direction for my new album. I can add other emotional layers to the music."

Two-Hawks' haunting, melodic playing on 2010's album Wind Songs was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Native American Album. He also was a composer and musician for the Emmy Award-nominated musical soundtrack for the TV movie based on Arkansas writer Dee Brown's classic book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Two-Hawks is not an enrolled member of any tribe, although he is of Oglala Lakota (Oglala Sioux) and Anishinaabe Indian heritage, along with Irish and French. His elder-given Lakota name is Siyotanka (Big/Great Flute).

"I have always identified with my Oglala heritage," he says. "I have other bloods, of course. But my friend Andrea Menard, who is also of mixed Indian and European ancestry, told me that 'We of mixed ancestry are the bridge ... we can see through both sets of eyes.' That was very powerful for me."

Menard, who is from Canada, sings on the album's title song. He says, "I wanted to sing with [Menard], but when I heard her voice alone, I couldn't do it. It would have taken away from her vocal."

Two-Hawks plays most of the music on Hidden Medicine: several flutes, piano, guitar and percussion. Along with Menard, other guests include guitarist Van Adams. Peggy Hill, who is married to Two-Hawks, co-produced the album with her husband. They released it on their own Circle Studios Records.

North Little Rock is the third stop on the performer's new tour. Along with playing music, Two-Hawks also gives lectures, leads workshops, designs flutes and writes books.

"I was pretty scattered as a young man, I wanted to write, sing, paint ... dabble in all of them," he says. "An elder told me more than two decades ago I needed to focus on one creative outlet, plant that seed, water it, make it grow. Out of that will grow a flower that will open up the opportunity for all the other creative energies. That's when I shifted to my first love, music."

Two-Hawks, who considers Jethro Tull's Songs From the Wood, early Pink Floyd and Manfred Mann's Earth Band, along with New Age music pioneer Dik Darnell, as musical influences, says he wants his music and words to do more than entertain: "What I hope for, when people come to the concert, is that they are able to allow themselves to enter into the sacred space I try to create and allow themselves to hear the music, to hear the story and to find what is in there for them.

"I hope the music will give each person something to take into their lives to make it better than it was before they came."

Weekend on 01/05/2017

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