I don’t know if anyone can really answer this, but I thought I would try.
I was visiting a music store in Ashland, OR last week. They have what looks like an old flute there and are advertising it as a 1920’s German flute. They are asking about $220. I am not really looking for a flute, but always visit music stores where ever I go. Bad habit.
It is keyed with post mounted keys and looks like oxidized plastic or ebonite. Parts of the body are black but other parts are aged to greenish/yellowish. The only marking on it is faint but says “Pakistan” The box looks cheap and Pakistani to me.
I think this is a Pakistani flute, but the guy working at the store says it is not but couldn’t explain why it says “Pakistan” on the headjoint. The P and n were kind of rubbed off but still faintly present, the akistan seemed pretty clear to me.
Does this sound like a Pakistani flute? Did they make flutes in Pakistan a long time ago? or does the material they use age rapidly?
When my kids were very small, one got in trouble for spray-painting his name on the garage floor. When confronted, he blamed it on his little brother, who couldn’t write yet. Hmmmm…
You never know for sure, but sometimes you just need to go with the obvious.
I don’t know the exact history. But my impression is that makers on the subcontinent have been (re)producing European style instruments since the days of the British Raj (1858-1947).
A short trip through Wikipedia tells me this: Pakistan is a portmanteau word in Urdu coined in 1934. So the name itself didn’t exist any time before that. The region was known as the Northwestern Region of India.
The United Nations Dominion of Pakistan was created in 1947. My guess would be that if something were built between 1947 and 1956 When Ayub Khan’s coup gave us modern Pakistan, it would probably reflect as the Dominion of Pakistan.
My guess: The people at the music store don’t have their story right, and the flute in question is of fairly recent manufacture. . .albeit having gone through some tough environmental times, e.g. excessive sunlight, heat, or moisture exposure.
My farthing’s worth.
Bob
Ooooh! I love it when you talk dirty, O Guru! As in Archaeology/rules of interpretation of evidence… TPQ and TAQ…lovely stuff (to which I haven’t had much exposure for donkey’s years…) It’ll be stratigraphy next. On a C&F forum!
Did someone say stratigraphy? All that I can remember from the undergraduate geology classes is that sedimentary rocks tend to be deposited in layers. Stratigraphers spend their lives trying to find which layers are on top of another one, or whether, maybe, the whole section of deposits may be upside down. I found myself going to sleep in the seminars when they dimmed the lights for the overhead viewer, so evidently I didn’t have the required inherent enthusiam for mudstone.. With regard to the flute in question, I’m aftraid that I wouldn’t have much patience with the music clerk who claimed that the flute plainly stamped “Pakistan” was actually a rare old European flute.
Just to add in that the earlier compositions of ebonite do go greenish, particularly with exposure to UV light - polishes off easy enough. There are more modern compositions which don’t do this. Nickel keys can tarnish to a green colour also…but presumably you are referring to the body material.
From your description above, definitely a Pakistani flute!
. . .yesterday I couldn’t even spell one. . . 