In the creation of the Storytelling brand and after much searching, we settled on a modified version of Kokopelli, a fertility deity and trickster god who is usually depicted as a humpbacked flute player (often with feathers or antenna-like protrusions on the head), who has been venerated by some Native American cultures in the Southwestern US. In these traditions, we read of travelers who would arrive from afar and approach the village playing a flute and carrying a bag of interesting things like seeds on their backs from afar. Of course, they would also bring stories with them.
Kokopelli is a kind of ‘wandering bard’ – living through traveling, telling stories, bringing new seed and helping connect communities to a larger world. Kokopelli also seems to be one of mankind’s oldest brands and his image is to be seen in many parts of North America, the earliest dating back to between 750 and 850 AD.
In another tradition, Kokopelli’s fluteplaying chases away the Winter and brings about Spring. Many tribes, such as the Zuni, also associate Kokopelli as the bringer of rain.
There are also interesting stories about the flute played by Kokopelli and the enculturation of young men in a tribe. In order to woo a maiden, the young man would need to make and then learn to play a ‘courtship flute’. When he had mastered the flute, he would then play outside the village and when his intended heard the sounds (and her ‘elk medicine’ and his ‘elk medicine’ were sufficiently strong), she would come to him.
So Kokopelli is many things, an entertainer, bringer of rain, dispeller of winter, bringer of seed from exotic places and, of course, shaman and teller of stories. And then they move along.
Kokopelli Partners do much of the the traditional Kokopelli moving around modern organisations bringing new ways to change culture and help create a new story going into the future.
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