Thank you.

I agree that the pan flute is significant. No musical instrument that has been with humanity for more than 65 centuries can be considered anything but significant. However, significance is not the true problem that the pan flute’s image has nowadays.

The true problem is, that the pan flute is viewed (by the masses) as an instrument for discriminating posers and intolerant arrogant snots. The pan flute has attracted a surfeit of people who behave as though possessing even an ounce of pan flute knowhow, renders them and their opinions superior to those who do not.

When a non-panflutist expresses a less-than-positive opinion, the pan flute chat groups simply write them off as ignorant , uninformed, and uneducated, while simultaneously holding to their smugly held belief in their imagined musical and cultural superiority.

The willingness of the online pan flute chat groups to:
1) give shelter to, and fail to address discriminating attitudes
2) silence dissenting voices under the guise of “maintaining the peace”
3) fail to address favoritism towards certain members
4) fail to accept the reality of the masses’ perceptions

All of these factors have led to the instruments’ continued marginalization in the modern musical consciousness.

After all, when the chips are all down, Kevin, who will want to play an instrument that is associated with people for whom arrogance, discrimination, censorship, and intolerance are the order of the day?

Who will want to be associated with a**holes?

So, how can this be repaired?

The solution is simple, but I fear it is beyond the power of the present pan flute chat group regimes to accomplish. The solution is simply this: make the pan flute a cool instrument to play.

When the pan flute is as cool an instrument to play as the guitar, then one of my lifelong dreams will be realized. To that end, I make knowledge of the pan flute freely available to all, and damn any pompous “virtuoso” that doesn’t like it.

Douglas Bishop
http://www.panflutejedi.com

P.S. Things are a little different, Kevin, in a place where you can’t make my messages disappear

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK_IgZA-QQw

Kevin

But you’re right — we disagree. This auction will prove that you need a pan flute. Nonconformist bidders know. YOU. NEED. THIS. PAN. FLUTE.

Hopefully that won’t depress the auction price of the pan flute too much.