The aliens may have taught us to play flutes. One flute in particular, the Quena, seems especially alien. Learn about the Quena flute in episode #37 of TNT here:
Did the Aliens Give Us Flutes? Why the Quena Flute is So Delightfully Enlightening.
While marching on in search of bread and honey, or something equally yummy to quell my outspoken tummy, I heard the hollow wooden sound of something funny.
My nylon pockets lacked much money, sixty Soles if I t’was lucky, and it didn’t help that on the map I walked in Pisac, a mountain tourist trap set on soaking up the economic max.
Then, “twiddly toooot, fiddleee feee”, a lofty mountain echo grew and shrunk, a sound so sweet it taunted me.
It wasn’t jazz, it wasn’t funk. It was a weirder tune; less common than a shining daylight moon.
A tweety bird or mountain man? I placed a bet. My mind went 50/50.
Drum roll please… it was a bird-like man, fit with magic mountain hands!
He didn’t need a band, nope, just one healthy set of lungs and sixty Soles worth of wooden fun.
Anthropological wiz-bangs and rainbow poncho-wearing Peruvian elders alike have come to believe the Quena flute (pronounced “Kehna”) and its birdlike woodwind tones first sliced through foggy Andean Mountain clouds more than 500 years ago.
A surprise: although machines now fabricate a huge percentage of these magnificent Peruvian souvenirs, its basic design is still the same as it was when the Incas tooted coded messages across the mountain waterfalls.
While potentially offensive to die-hard vegans, seeing as it is made from what I might guess was less than sustainably sourced llama bone, my current Quena flute has become one of my most noble and loyal travel companions, but this wasn’t always the case...
For a two week stretch more solid than the immoral bone itself, I blew and puffed and spit, but my flute produced little more than a random airy screech, most often sounding like a dead bird rather than a living one, or perhaps a bored infant blowing milky bubbles.
Such toil was not only caused by an innate lack in motivation, but also the flute’s atypical design. Instead of blowing air into a normal round hole, the fluteswoman is required to cover a large hole with the flappy skin of her lower lip, then blow at a rather specific angle, with particular pressure, over the tiny U shaped mouth notch until a crisp “twiddly tooooot” follows her efforts. Fortunately for the fledgling flautist, this extra bit of effort affords the unique capability of playing a full three octaves, even though most similar woodwind flutes can only produce two.
Some experienced flautists claim that the magically transportable instrument has a total of 101 uses -- no more, no less -- ranging from makeshift blow gun for self defense to firewood. I have personally only been able to discover 68, but faith in supreme potentiality keeps me curious and hungry.
So, as did loly mountain peasants and alien-allied Inca Emperors, I will continue playing the Quena flute. And so will Perú. Together, like a flock of tweety mountain birds, we’ll toot into the future for the righteous sake of universal harmony and auditory fun!
Stay wild folks,
A.C.E. the Theorist