R. Carlos Nakai Quotes

United States, Musician
April 16, 1946

Raymond Carlos Nakai (born April 16, 1946) is a Native American flutist of Navajo/Ute heritage. Ray Carlos Nakai was born in Flagstaff, Arizona on April 16, 1946 and now resides in Tucson, Arizona. He began his musical career as a freshman at Northern Arizona University studying brass instruments and playing in the NAU marching band.

I studied trumpet for almost 15 years and was performing with a professional concert marching band in parades and rodeos. I was headed back east to study music, and if I hadn't been intrigued with the Native American flute, I suppose I'd now be jockeying for first chair of the brass section of some orchestra, or perhaps I'd be teaching music in a school system.

R. Carlos Nakai
The flute is traditionally the property of the male side of matrilineal hunter-gatherer societies and was used as a means of communication and personal expression.

R. Carlos Nakai

A birth we embark on a good journey, seeking a destination of happiness. The journeys on our life-road facilitate development of our emotional, mental, physical and spiritual states-of-being, into a way of true power and wisdom. The Heart-center power, expressed as happiness and love, will guide us upward on a path away from frustration, bitter toil and travail. These journeys are directed inward, not outwardly in material mementos of ego and possession. The lesson is relearning that which has been suppressed and forgotten, in ourselves, since our earliest childhood.

R. Carlos Nakai
- Happiness
- Journey
- Birth