Of Navajo-Ute heritage, R. Carlos Nakai is the world's premier performer of the Native American flute. Nakai began his musical studies on the trumpet but his musical interests took a turn when he was given a traditional cedar wood flute as a gift and challenged to see what he could do with it. His first album, Changes, was released by Canyon Records in 1983 and since then he has released over thirty recordings with Canyon plus additional albums and guest appearances on other labels. In addition to his educational workshops and residencies, Nakai has appeared as a soloist throughout the United States, Europe and Japan and has collaborated with such artists as guitarist/luthier William Eaton and composers James DeMars and Phillip Glass among many others. Nakai, while well grounded in the traditional uses of the flute, began finding new musical settings including the genres of world, new age, jazz, and classical. Nakai founded the ethnic jazz ensemble, the R. Carlos Nakai Quartet, which allows him to explore the use of Native American musical elements in the jazz idiom. In a cross-cultural foray, he performed extensively with the Wind Travelin' Band, a traditional Japanese ensemble from Kyoto and together they released an album, Island of Bows. He has also worked with Tibetan flutist and singer Nawang Khechog on several productions including In A Distant Place.

Nakai brought the flute into the concert hall, often performing a concerto for Native American flute, “Two World Concerto.” composed by James DeMars. He has appeared as a soloist with the Phoenix, Tucson, California, Anchorage, Saskatoon (Canada), Flagstaff, San Juan, Arizona State University and Wuppertal (Germany) Symphonies among others Nakai has received two gold records (500,000 units sold in the U.S.) for Canyon Trilogy and Earth Spirit (the first Native American recordings to earn this achievement) and has sold over 3.5 million albums in the course of his career. In 1994 Nakai’s third collaboration with Eaton, Ancestral Voices, was a GRAMMY® Awards Nominee for Best Traditional Folk Album. In 2000 he earned a rare double nomination in the same category for Inner Voices and Inside Monument Valley as GRAMMY® Nominees for Best New Age Album. Other GRAMMY® nominations include In A Distant Place (2001 Nominee for Best New Age Album), Fourth World (2002 Nominee for Best New Age Album), Sanctuary (2004 Nominee for Best Native American Album), and People of Peace (2006 Nominee for Best New Age Album).

A Navy veteran, Nakai has earned a Master's Degree in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona. He was awarded the Arizona Governor's Arts Award in 1992 and an honorary doctorate from Northern Arizona University in 1994. In 2005 Nakai was inducted into the Arizona Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame. Nakai has also co-authored a book with composer James DeMars, The Art of the Native American Flute, which is a guide to performing the traditional cedar flute and includes transcriptions of Nakai's songs.

Nakai’s career has been shaped by a desire to communicate a sense of Native American culture and society that transcends the common stereotypes presented in mass media.