Biography
Born Ray Carlos Nakai, in Flagstaff, Arizona, he released his first album, Changes, in 1983. He has been nominated for four Grammy Awards, and two of his records, Canyon Trilogy and Earth Spirit, have been RIAA certified Gold, two of the first Native American flute albums to go gold.
He published The Art of the Native American Flute in 1996 with James Demars, Ken Light and David P. McAllester, which provided resources and support for other musicians playing the Native American flute. It defined a system of tablature notation that could be used across a wide variety of flute keys and tunings.
In 2005 he was inducted into the Arizona Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame. As well as having a large number of solo albums, Nakai has also worked with many other musicians, including Tibetan flutist Nawang Khechog, flutist Paul Horn, and American composer Philip Glass. In 2005 he traveled to Hawaii to collaborate with slack key guitar master Keola Beamer fusing two very different indigenous American cultural forms and producing the album, "Our Beloved Land." He lives in Tucson, Arizona. Nakai earned a Master’s Degree in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona. He was awarded the Arizona Governor’s Arts Award in 1992, and an honorary doctorate from Northern Arizona University in 1994.
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