Lucky draw brings music group to Turkey

Posted: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 12:00 am | Updated: 9:59 am, Fri Sep 25, 2009.

By Peter Adelsen padelsen@kokomoperspective.com | 0 comments

A music group with one member from Kokomo is about to embark on its international tour next week, so to speak. Although "Branches Breath" has only been playing Native American flutes for three years, it was picked to perform on Sept. 25 as the first American group at the sixth annual Mystic Music Festival that runs from Sept. 23 to Sept. 30 in Konya, Turkey.

"It was pure luck," said Jeff Gegner, a group member who works for IU Kokomo.

The group of Gegner, Jason Chaplin of Avon, and Richard Brooner of Jeffersonville played for the Native American Center of Indiana in Indianapolis a few times, he said. Ironically, a professor at the Ohio State University who is from Turkey was contacted by the Minister of Culture in Turkey about finding a group from the United States to play at the festival. The professor did a general broadcast to all the Native American groups and anything else that was "mystic music," he said.

"They sent them our name," he said. "(The festival) contacted us and we sent them our CDs and our biographies. They picked us."

At first, the group was a bit skeptical about this festival, he said.

"Honestly at first, we thought this was some sort of a scam," he said. "We really did. We thought they were going to book this and then all of a sudden we were going to owe $10,000 or something. Who would have figured that three guys from Indiana would be traveling to Turkey to play Native American flutes?"

Instead, it was true and it was an all-expenses paid trip, he said. The Turkish government is paying for everything including housing, food, and transportation, he said.

"That's the biggest reward that we have ever gotten," he said. "Obviously, we wouldn't afford to go if it wasn't all-expenses paid."

The group normally plays for free, he said.

One thing that sets this group apart from others who play Native American flute is that this group is not Native American so they play more freely.

"We don't claim to be Native players, we are just players of Native American flutes," he said. "We all three play percussion. We don't play quote 'Native American' music. We do traditional styles to jam to jazz to blues to whatever we decide fits."

Gegner said the group will be playing a more traditional style at the festival with a mixture of jazz-style pieces.

"Traditionally, you would never have more than one flute playing at a time because they weren't digitally tuned," he said. "Ours are tuned together so we can play together. We don't play what we consider traditional music. And it wouldn't be fitting because we aren't Native American."

The group plays freestyle music so every song they play is unique, he said.

"All we do is pick out keys and the styles of songs to spread out throughout the piece," he said. "It is planned, but it is still freestyle."

As a part of their performance, Branches Breath will be presenting a slide show that will be shown behind them while they play about the Native American flute, he said.

Not too long ago, Branches Breath did not exist and may not even exist today if Gegner had not found out about these flutes through an online forum, he said.

"I canoe and I'm on a forum called paddling.net," he said. "There is a guy on there who said he was getting a Native American flute and suggested to me to look into them and I ordered one. As soon as it came in, I could play. The learning curve was very short for me."

Soon after, he began going to a flute circle in Indianapolis for Native American flutes, he said. After going there for a few months, he said, another group called "Shilombish" was invited to play at the Hilbert Circle Theatre and group invited what would become Branches Breath to join them for the event, he said.

"We got done and Jason says 'well, will you guys be interested in forming a group if we wanted to start playing around?' he said. "And Richard and I said 'sure, why not.' We didn't know what it would turn out to be."

Since that time, the group has worked two to three events a month, he said.

"We have a lot of fun," he said. "Our whole goal is enjoyment and trying to pass the enjoyment on to our listeners. That's our really only goal is to make sure people enjoy what we do. It makes us happy."

For people who would like to purchase a CD from the group, these people can do so by visiting the group's Web site at http://branchesbreath.ning.com.

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