I have always loved whistling, and I have been doing it for as long as I can remember. As I went through music classes in school and learned to play the trumpet and french horn, I gained a new appreciation for musical whistling. I was always better at whistling than singing or playing other instruments and I would find myself idly whistling when walking around or doing something else. Unfortunately, my whistling bothered my mother, so I always had to whistle quietly in the house.
In high school, I stumbled across a YouTube video that showed people competing in an international whistling competition. I remember thinking that I was better at whistling than some of the competitors, and I decided to look into it. The competition was held at the International Whistlers Convention (IWC) in Louisburg, North Carolina every year. It turns out, the videos I found on YouTube were part of a documentary called Pucker Up: The Fine Art of Whistling. The documentary shows the first year that Geert Chatrou won the competition. Geert is now widely considered of of the greatest whistlers of all time.
Throughout college at Salisbury University, I was never able to compete as the competition always happened during finals week. Unfortunately, the competition was discontinued before I graduated, so I never got to compete in the IWC. There was, however, a spiritual successor to the IWC that was formed in Japan called the World Whistlers Convention (WWC) that was set to have their first event in the summer of 2016 in Tokyo. I jumped at the opportunity, and passed the audition to compete in 2016. During my performance at the competition, I didn’t use the directional microphone properly and ended up not making it to the second round with an overall rating of 12th. It was an incredible experience that I will never forget! The WWC was planned to happen every even year, so I decided to save up for travel expenses to go every other year.
In 2017, another international whistling competition was founded, called the Masters of Musical Whistling International Festival, Competition, and Concert (MMW). I didn’t find out about this competition in time to audition, but I decided to keep an eye out for it in the future as it was set to happen every odd year. In 2018, I auditioned for the WWC again but did not pass the audition. I was upset with myself for not practicing enough for the audition, but I still attended the competition as an audience member.
In 2019 I finally auditioned for the MMW competition in the Stage 2 category, which was the second highest category in the main track of the competition. I was accepted to the competition, and I managed to get 2nd place in my category! This is my proudest achievement in whistling thus far, and gave me the confidence to strive for a true champion title some day.
With the pandemic in 2020, the WWC in Japan had to be canceled as it would not be safe to host such an event and Japan was effectively closed to all travel. During this time, a group of six whistlers including myself decided to try to host an online concert or something of that nature for the people who were accepted to perform at WWC 2020. Throughout our discussions, we ended up deciding that it might be more helpful for the whistling community if we founded an online organization that would help whistlers from around the world and host our own online competition. Thus, The International Whistlers Guild (IWG) and the Global Whistling Championship (GWC) were born. The first GWC competition was a huge success with over 100 whistlers participating in the event!
The IWG is still active in promoting whistling, conducting masterclasses, and hosting events such as the GWC 2021. In 2022, the IWG was given the honor of organizing the opening concert and masterclass sessions at the WWC in Japan. Due to travel restrictions, this event was mostly attended in-person by Japanese whistlers, but we were able to include the international audience through a livestream of the event. In 2023, the IWG was recognized as a non-profit organization, and we plan to continue putting on interesting and valuable events for the whistling community.
Please check out the International Whistlers Guild on our website at: https://whistlersguild.org/