“The Native American flute, that’s its purpose. It’s for comforting, healing.”
senator’s declining health, and when McCain’s family thanked him for playing, he instantly considered them friends.
Then, they parted ways. McCain’s health continued to falter. Littlesunday didn’t hear from the senator’s family again until after his death Saturday, when they asked him to perform at the memorial.
“They just remembered,” he said. “I would never say no.”
The McCains requested a certain type of song. Something soft. Something that flowed, filling a room with the subtle sounds of sympathy. Littlesunday chose one he wrote himself, “An Expression of Love,”
The song, he believed, was more than his music. It was his prayer.
He understood that now. It had been decades since his grandfather led him to a dying sheep at their home by Gray Mountain, on the western edge of the Navajo Reservation. Littlesunday was a young boy, still teaching his fingers how to find the right notes. He sat in front of the animal. A stray dog had chewed its leg to the bone.
So young Jonah played his flute. His grandfather watched. Soon after, the sheep’s life faded away.
“I watched his eyes close, and how he fell asleep,” he said, remembering the moment years later. “And I played and I prayed.”
He spent his musical career chasing that same moment, performing at funerals that other musicians spurned. When death and grief surrounded him, he offered songs of soothing. His grandfather’s words — — began to make sense.
“The Native American flute, that’s its purpose,” he said. “It’s for comforting, healing.”
But it never provided a steady career. Music had long been Littlesunday’s side gig, filling the space in his life that his day job didn’t allow. Then his company laid him off from that job, and an entire life teetered on collapse. His family lost the car, then their house, and the only place they had to go was a tent in the forests of Flagstaff.
Littlesunday’s flute became his only way back. Sometime after he tried and failed to make it onto the TV show “America’s Got Talent,” Phoenix-based Native American music label Canyon Records offered him a deal.
Within three years he had released an album and earned three nominations at the Native American Music Awards.
He bought a recreational vehicle and moved his family to Phoenix, but they’re rarely home. More and more often, he’s headed to a performance.
The McCain family’s invitation came for two. Littlesunday’s wife and manager, Pauline, sat among the crowd Thursday as her husband’s song built into a steady rhythm. He knew his own song so well that the melody was almost a part of him. His fingers moved on their own. His breath flowed without thought.
Then, it was over. The music stopped and Littlesunday pulled the flute from his lips. He bowed, pressed a hand against his heart and held it out to McCain’s family.