Natives

This collaboration with new age keyboard star Peter Kater is the album that introduced Nakai mainstream record buyers. On its release, Natives stayed on Billboard's New Age Chart for almost a year, paving the way for the current renaissance in the Native flute. Once again the music is totally improvised, with Kater's romantic melodies and fat, left-hand chord clusters on the concert grand, providing a fertile environment for Nakai's flights of improvisational fancy. And although Kater is an impressive piano stylist, this is clearly Nakai's show; the brittle tones of his Eagle-bone whistle, and his measured chanting to the accompaniment of an Algonquin turtle rattle always move the music to a higher plane. --j. poet