A look at professional whistling
LOCAL COLUMNIST| ELIZABETH CRUMBLY
I’m a lifelong wind musician, and perhaps that’s the reason that the fact that I can’t whistle has always bothered me. No matter how hard I tried, my efforts fell as flat as King Julien’s. (For those of you without kids, he’s the deranged lemur king in “Madagascar” who displays his woeful whistling skills and then proclaims his desire to perform professionally.)
Imagine my surprise when I was able to get a low, airy sound out a few months ago. Unlike Julien, however, I have no designs on a whistling career. The more I whistled, however, the more I wondered if there are such people and if I could find someone in the South.
A Google journey brought me to Andy Irwin, a Georgia resident and member of the fledgling International Whistlers’ Guild and a top 20 placer in last year’s Global Whistling Championship. What does it take, I wondered, to embark on such an endeavor?
Irwin was willing to walk me through his rise as a performer.
“I always was the best whistler around until I was in the competition,” he said, laughing at the start of what turned out to be a very entertaining conversation.
His verbal style whirls in, out and around the subjects he’s discussing, putting me in mind of his musical skills. At one point during the interview, he actually broke into song, putting forth the brilliant staccato trills of a piccolo, and I couldn’t tell the difference between his sounds and the tiny wind instrument.
“I can fake a lot of winds,” was his nonchalant response to my jaw-on-the-ground amazement.
He performed Gershwin’s Second Prelude for the competition with a piano accompaniment. There was no pitch correction allowed, and he also couldn’t mix the performance at all. He had been scheduled to compete live in Tokyo before COVID-19 torpedoed those plans, and Irwin was proud of his fellow competitors who made the best of things.
“It’s a really sweet bunch of people who said, ‘Hey, we can do this online,’” he says. “I was the newest kid.”
Irwin describes advancing one’s whistling skills in terminology usually reserved for learning a wind instrument. Harnessing one’s whistling ability, he says, is about finding boundaries — figuring out how low you can bring your notes and how to temper them as you weave them together for a tune.
“If you play a trombone and drop the slide, it finds the brakes,” he says, likening that situation to sustaining low whistled notes. “It’s kind of like bending a harmonica. It’s finding those tricks … Whistling is really efficient — all of the air is doing work.”
Irwin, a sixth-generation Newton Countian, attended Georgia College & State University, and his band director there, an alto sax player, would occasionally pick up a flute so he and Irwin could “exchange eights” in a sort of jam session.
That rapid-fire skill eventually evolved into session work in Nashville, which Irwin still does from time to time. When he’s not behind the mike recording whistling work, he’s often on the road performing as a storyteller. He describes his style as “standup comedy but longform narratives,” and he hopes to come to the Rome area when the Big Fibbers Storytelling Festival (bigfibbers.com) is up and running again. Like so many, its 2020 and 2021 iterations had to be canceled.
Meanwhile, I encourage you to experience Irwin’s sound-bending skills at his website, https://andyirwin.com/, and if you are interested in enhancing your own whistling technique, there are resources through the International Whistler’s Guild at https://whistlersguild.org/. Whether you’ve been whistling during your day-to-day activities your whole life or you have an interest in competition, the whistlers from this year’s competition are sure to amaze you.
By the end of December 2020, the Georgia Northwestern Technical College (GNTC) Foundation raised approximately $250,000 in support of students from private donations, corporate gifts, grants, planned giving and establishment of an endowed fund.
At the conclusion of GNTC’S Annual and Year-end Giving Campaign: “A Gift of Impact,” the GNTC Foundation raised $90,464 in scholarship funds, surpassing the original goal of $20,000 by a large margin. Gifts from GNTC employees alone exceeded $20,000.
“We are so grateful to the Northwest Georgia community for its terrific response to our fundraising appeals,” said GNTC President Heidi Popham. “Because of their donations, many more of our students have been able to stay enrolled and on track to graduate despite the impact of COVID-19.”
According to Lauretta Hannon, GNTC director of Institutional Advancement, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the number of students who are facing financial hardships.
“The GNTC Foundation has been working non-stop in the setting up and awarding of scholarships and other forms of financial support for students hit hard by the pandemic,” said Hannon. “Thanks to the generosity of donors, we’ve been able to increase student support by 100%.”
Shortly after the conclusion of the fundraising campaign, the GNTC Foundation awarded 31 qualifying students with scholarships for the Spring 2021 semester. The Foundation also received a donation from the Winn family and established an endowment scholarship as well as a food pantry on the Polk County Campus in honor of the late Tallapoosa Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Dan Peace Winn.
The GNTC Foundation offers scholarships and financial assistance to eligible students on the GNTC website. Student financial assistance can help with tuition, books, supplies, fees, licensure exams and other needs. For more information on donating to the GNTC Foundation, please contact Michelle Beatson, Foundation administrator, at 706-802-5850 or visit the Foundation’s donation page.
The GNTC Foundation
Trustees are Phil Burkhalter, Floyd County; Valerie Brown, Whitfield County; Linda Case, Dade County; Jay Legrande, Polk County; Gary Mcconnell, Chattooga County; Craig Mcdaniel, Floyd County; Sherrie Patterson, Murray County; Damon Raines, Walker County; Becky Redd, Gordon County; Mitch Sanford, Whitfield County; Jay Still, Whitfield County; Wil Stiles, Catoosa County; Scott Tucker, Floyd County; Carolyn Walker, Walker County; and Doris White, Walker County.
What: Zoom virtual opening for “The 6888th in Fort Oglethorpe”
When: Thursday, Feb. 25, 7-8 p.m.
For more information: 6th Cavalry Museum website or call 706-861-2860
More: Four education video topics are :
♦ Origins of the WAC
♦ The Fight for Overseas Service
♦ Training at Fort Oglethorpe
♦ Overseas Service in the 6888th