Cold Rain, Creeping Water: A Song History
"Cold Rain, Creeping Water" is one of fourteen pieces in DulciFlute 3, a Fingers Of Steel book of duets for Native American flute and mountain dulcimer by John Keane and Karen Keane, which calls for a dulcimer tuned DAD and a flute in B minor.[1] Along with the PDF music, the download comes with an MP3 recording of each song.[1] The Keanes come from Shreveport, Louisiana, and both hold music education degrees; Karen Keane's DulcimerDownloads page describes them as composers whose original dulcimer and flute music fills several books and CDs.[2] Neither the listing nor any other source consulted here names the composer of this particular tune, documents a recording history beyond the book, or explains its title.[1][2]
Utagawa Hiroshige, Night Rain at Karasaki, from Eight Views of Ōmi, color woodblock print, c. 1835. Shown for its rain; it has no connection to the tune.
As background on the instrument in general, not on this tune, Ed Wapp, Jr.'s essay for the 1973 Smithsonian Folklife Festival counts the courting flute among three Native American melody instruments, alongside the voice and the Apache violin.[3] Wapp associates the flute mainly with Woodlands and Southwestern tribes and with those of the Southern and Northern Plains, and names red cedar, redwood and pine as the woods it is made from.[3] He writes that it once carried signals after dark, though its commonest role was in courtship, as a young man's means of making his love known.[3]
Sources
- Fingers Of Steel: "John Keane And Karen Keane, DulciFlute 3".
- DulcimerDownloads: "Karen Keane".
- Smithsonian Folklife Festival: "The Courting Flute in Native American Tradition" (Ed Wapp, Jr., 1973).
- Image: Utagawa Hiroshige, Night Rain at Karasaki, from Eight Views of Ōmi, color woodblock print, c. 1835. The Cleveland Museum of Art.