Kachina House offers a large selection of Native American musical instruments including Native American mother drums, two-sided drums, tom-toms, hand drums, flutes, and rattles.  If you’ve been looking for Native American instruments to play in ceremony, meditation, enjoyment, or for decoration, then Kachina House, Arizona’s largest distributor of Native American crafts, has your instrument. We invite you to click around our online store, because we believe you will not find another store that carries as many Native American products with the high quality and competitive prices at Kachina House. Not only are all of Kachina House’s products competitively priced, they also come with certificates of authenticity.

Drums: The round form of the drum represents the universe, and its steady strong beat is the pulse, the heart, the throbbing at the center of the universe. This sound stirs us and helps us to understand the mystery and power of all things. Paul Tohlakai (Navajo) creates some of our ceremonial hand drums; each is handcrafted and tuned. He has developed an original stretch-and-tie technique. Cochiti Ray (Cochiti) creates some of our ceremonial hand drums as well as our tom-toms, two-sided drums and mother drums. 

Drum Care

Drums can be sensitive to humidity. Use reasonable care when storing your drum. If the drum becomes too tight, place a wet towel inside the drum for a short time, allowing the rawhide to absorb some moisture. Let the drum dry out. If the hide becomes warped and the tone of the drum becomes flat, you can place the drum in direct sunlight, or to speed the drying, place the drum in an open oven at a very low heat. Periodically massage a natural oil into the hide to help maintain the tone of your drum.

Flutes: Native American flutes are instruments of music, ceremony, entertainment, courtship and love. Some Navajo medicine men say a girl will find irresistible the boy who plays the flute for her. Most traditional Navajo flutes were made from sunflower stalk; today the flutes are evolving into a medium of artistic expression that uses a variety of materials. Jonah Thompson (Navajo) makes all of our flutes. The standard Native American Flute is the A Minor which we stock in pine with many different animal totems and stained in three different colors. Jonah also makes our cedar flutes which are in F Sharp and E Minor. He also makes a double-chamber, or drone flute, which has one chamber that is a constant tone and the other is an F Sharp. The cedar flutes are richer in sound than the pine and are quickly becoming the most popular flutes in our line.

Flute Care

Flutes, both pine and cedar, need to be maintained and the totem and leather strapping adjusted for sound quality. We have a booklet written by Jonah, Navajo Flutes, that has some tips on playing the flute, caring for the instrument and a few songs. We recommend this simple book for young people. We also carry an excellent more involved instruction book by John Vames, The Native American Flute, which has fingering, breathing techniques, lessons, music, and a CD so you can listen and learn. A wonderful more involved piece for the serious flute student.

If you are planning a trip to the Sedona, Arizona area we invite you to the Kachina House showroom/warehouse. Here you’ll find thousands of beautiful Native American made products. If you don’t see what you’re looking for on our website, give us a call or send us an email; we’ll do our best to meet your needs. If you have any questions about our products, feel free to contact us toll free at 866-587-0547; we’re only a click or call away and we look forward to hearing from you.

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