Notched flute.

An end-blown flute (open or stopped) with a V- or U-shaped notch cut or burnt into its upper rim to facilitate tone production. No clear line can be usefully drawn between rim-blown flutes (e.g. many used in panpipes) having gently cupped rims and ‘notched’ flutes with shallow U-shaped notches. An enormous variety of notched flutes used as solo and ensemble instruments are found widely distributed across Africa, East Asia, the Pacific Islands and Central and South America. Notched flutes of bone, with three equidistant finger-holes, were used in the Chavín culture of Peru (900–200 bce). The coastal Chancay culture of Peru (1300–1438), noted for its white-on-black pottery, produced cane or clay notched flutes with four to eight finger-holes. The modern Chinese Xiao, of bamboo, has its notch cut into a natural node forming the upper end of the flute, the node serving, like the player’s lower lip in other varieties, to seal off the upper end of the flute. Thus the xiao is intermediate between notched and duct flutes.

See also Shakuhachi; for illustrations see Flute, fig.1d and fig.2c.

PETER COOKE, JOHN M. SCHECHTER