Geert Chatrou

Some mention on this dutch chat show:  http://tinyurl.com/ylq9ubz. Scroll to 26 mins, and watch from there.

Also here is a short documentary on Geert Chatrou http://tinyurl.com/yg5okxz.

Must be something about the Dutch and whistling!

Letter to Barack Obama

Ok so now that I am the whistling champion it should be only a matter of time before I can meet Barack Obama. Other whistlers have met presidents, so I can too! (insert mini child tantrum foot stomp).  And while I am at it, I can help fulfil one of Mitch Hider’s top 10 wishes (a National Whislting day). So here goes the letter that I will write.

Dear Barack,

I write to you as the newly crowned international grand champion of whistling (2009). The competition, held in Louisburg North Carolina is the only serious whistling competition in the world, and has been going for 36 years. Sadly fewer and fewer Americans are winning the competition (only one of the winners out of the men’s, teen, children’s and women’s categories was an American!).

Japan is now emerging as the country that is the most serious about whistling. As a result, last year’s competition was held in Japan, and I fear that we are in danger of losing this competition from American soil altogether if we are not careful. Lets not become complacent like we did with the America’s cup!

So why am I emailing you? as I am in work mode and you are undoubtedly busy, I will summarise what I think would be a good way forward, and highlight the benefits.

• The establishment of a National Whistling Day. In these tough economic times whistling makes people happy (I am regularly asked if I am happy simply because I whistle alot – which I am!), and the ‘whistle while you work’ association will promote hard work. 
• This and other initiatives will promote whistling in America and will mean that the title of Whistling champion can return to American soil (where it was for years until about 5 years ago).
• Federal government funding for the Franklyn County Arts Council to ensure that the whistling competition remains on American Soil and is not lost to Japan! 
• An audience with you to demonstrate the whistling that won me the title of international grand champion. This is not without precedent – one of the previous champions whistled for George Bush Snr

As a side benefit, North Carolina was a very close state in the election. This would be a good news story that would capture the imaginations of North Carolineans, and unite the nation in happiness and patriotism and whistling!. America has led the world not just in ideals and economics, but sport, and culture. Don’t let whistling slip away too, its almost too late!

 Thank you very much for reading this email, I look forward to hearing from you as soon as is convenient.

 

Luke

PS your popularity is so strong overseas that even my 4 year old nephew Jonathan could tell me who the president of the USA was. Unfortunately it wasn’t you, it was Bucket O’Banana.

Mitch Hider’s 10 wishes for whistling

I got a letter from Mitch Hider (pictured) in which he said some very nice things about my whistling. Mitch was the MC for the whistling comp and said that he only remembers 5 others with the same style as me (that is the tongue whistling, rather than the ‘pucker’ style).

Mitch sent me some good stuff, and its nice to get a letter these days. One of the things that Mitch sent was ‘Mitch Hider’s 10 Wishes for Whistling”… which is below, with my comments afterwards in brackets (or ‘parentheses’ for you Americans)

1. A puckered planet, a whistling world (not sure how this wish would come true, but I like the alliteration!) 
2. Community whistling gatherings, choruses and marching bands (hang on thats three wishes in one! next you will be asking for a Kinder Surprise)
3. A biennial World Congress of Whistling, sponsored by ‘The International Institute for the Study and Development of Whistling as Music, Language and Sound’ (not sure if this institute exists – if not, I think that it should be set up!)
4. Whistlers-in-residence, whistling ambassadors, whistler laureates (I like this, and would hereby like to put myself forward as a h laureate)
5. Whistling taught in schools (the good thing about this is that kids can practice wherever they are, so it would help in their musical development, as opposed to an instrument that they reluctantly practice for an hour before they are allowed to go out and play)
6. Whistling section with every symphony orchestra (cool)
7. More new recordings by whistlers and reissues of the whistling classics (I agree, and I think that this will come when whistling’s profile is increased).
8. New musicals and operas featuring whistling (someone needs to write one!)
9. A live whistler doing Sweet Georgia Brown at every Harlem Globetrotters game (why only the Harlem globetrotters (is it because they are monkeyfez?))
10. National Whistling Day. Schools and businesses remain open (So help me if I can make only one of these 10 things happen it will be this one! – who do you write to to get these days allocated?! Obama? – well that is a good start).

Monkeyfez

Most of the people I speak to outiside of the whistling community (and when I say ‘whistling community’ I mean the guys that I met at the competition) seem to think that whistling is kind of kitch / amusing / funny / to be ridiculed.

I was wondering whether it really is or not. I do sometimes feel like a performing monkey (you know the one – with the fez and the energiser bunny cymbals). I think of the Jazz Flute guy in Anchorman (was it anchorman?), which was funny, but again, a little bit monkeyfezcymbals.

So there must be some cool examples of whistling. And there are:

• The whistling intro to Scorpions’ winds of change
• The intro to Ennio Morricone’s the good the bad and the ugly
• The always look on the bright side of life from Life of brian song (ok that is monkeyfez too)
• Some other song that I can’t remember right now, which has just been released.

Dammit, I am going to have to give this more thought!

The rise of Japan!

The Japanese are kicking ass at whistling. 1/3 of all the finalists in the Adult categoy were Japanese (5/15). They started winning fairly recently, and last year the 35th Annual competition was held in Japan. There are some other competitions that are held in Japan now, and it is only a matter of time before the young guys get older and Japan starts to win everything!

In the 2009 competition Japanese whistlers took out the first prizes in the teen and children’s categories and placed highly in the women’s… What would be cool is to have a whistle-odd between Holland and Japan!

An American woman did win the female grand champion title (Karole Anne Kaufman), but she was pretty much the only American who did (her tone was amazing).

Roadtrip to Louisburg

So the whistling competition is in Louisburg, a 10 hour drive from NY. I set off with my artist girlfriend Lydia Mullin (her art is excellent – see it here), Laura, and Lydia’s friend Anna, who is making a documentary on our trip called “London to Louisburg” (so stay tuned it will be awesome!). We all got along really well and laughed more than I have for a while.

On the first night we had an evening at a cool pub in Philly and stayed at the Latham hotel – in its heyday Led Zeppelin stayed there. After lunch the next day in DC we arrived in Louisburg and stayed in a great place for the next 4 days, 30 minutes from where the whistling competition was (which was in Louisburg College).

Apart from Laura freaking out everytime some long flying bug infiltrated the mosquito net, it was pretty good. We smoke and drank way too much.

How I got into whistling in competitions

The first time I thought that I could win stuff was when my friend Dean Jezard sent me an email with the subject line “mate – you would surely win this!”. Dean plays drums for a band that my old drummer now sings and plays guitar for. We also both work for TigerSpike (he and I are two of the original founders in fact!), so he knew I could whistle.

Anyway GIO, an Australian Insurance company (I lived in Sydney at the time) has a commercial with people whistling men at work’s ‘land down under’, so they had a competition before Jazz in the doman, and Classical in the domain (Non Australians – ‘the Domain’ is a park in Sydney) to see who could whistle it the best.

The prize up for grabs (which may be the biggest prize in whistling to date!) was a big screen TV and home surround sound system valued at AU$7,000! (US$6k). So I decided to enter!

The format was that people just walked up and whistled for some judges (not real judges, just volunteers who worked at the Domain). Then they picked 6 of us, and the crowd cheered for who they thought should win.

There were over 50,000 people in the crowd (not for the whistling, they were waiting to hear the Jazz), and after fighting off some stiff competition from a 5 year old cute girl (who got many cheers for those facts alone), I won!… And my home theatre was awesome, and it was marred only by some people thinking I cheated by having something in my mouth (you David Berkelouw – although I hear you won the classical one… that true?)

So anyway after that I wanted to win more so I got on the net and did some research, and found out that the Mt Everest of whistling competitions is in Louisburg, and is run by Franklyn County arts Council (see it here). But I had missed the 07 deadline and didn’t realise that it was being held in Japan in 08, so waited until 09 – which was made easier because I moved from Sydney to New York earlier in the year.

The difference between the Australian competition and Louisburg, is that in Australia there were no other people who specifically went there because they could whistle. They just went up on stage for a laugh… while in Louisburg they were pretty much all amazing (you don’t travel to Louisburg from Norway ‘just for a laugh’). There were 55 competitors from all over the world who went there, with the biggest contingent being the Japanese