This collaboration with new age keyboard star Peter Kater is the album that introduced Nakai mainstream record buyers. On its release, Natives stayed on Billboard's New Age Chart for almost a year, paving the way for the current renaissance in the Native flute. Once again the music is totally improvised, with Kater's romantic melodies and fat, left-hand chord clusters on the concert grand, providing a fertile environment for Nakai's flights of improvisational fancy. And although Kater is an impressive piano stylist, this is clearly Nakai's show; the brittle tones of his Eagle-bone whistle, and his measured chanting to the accompaniment of an Algonquin turtle rattle always move the music to a higher plane. --j. poet
