Falling Whistles
Falling Whistles sells whistles for $34 to $104 to raise money for education, advocacy, and the rehabilitation of war-affected people in Congo. The organization got its name from a journal written by its founder, sharing his experiences during a trip to eastern Congo in 2008. During that trip, Falling Whistles' founder met a group of five former child soldiers who told him that some children who were too young to carry weapons were sent into battle armed only with whistles. By wearing whistles, the campaign aims to use this weapon as a tool of protest and to raise awareness of the situation in Congo. As of September 2010, $500,000 has been raised.
Tin whistle
Steve Buckley, a British jazz musician is renowned for using the penny whistle as a serious instrument. His whistle playing can be heard on recordings with Loose Tubes, Django Bates and his album with Chris Batchelor Life As We Know It. Les Lieber is a celebrated American Jazz Tinwhistle player. Lieber has played with Paul Whiteman's Band and also with the Benny Goodman Sextet. Lieber made a record with Django Reinhardt in the AFN Studios in Paris in the post Second World War era and started an event called "Jazz at Noon" every Friday in a New York City restaurant playing with a nucleus of advertising men, doctors, lawyers, and business executives who had been or could have been jazz musicians. Howard Johnson has also been known to play this instrument. Musical polymath Howard Levy introduces the tune True North with a jazz and very traditionally Celtic-inspired whistle piece on Bela Fleck and the Flecktones' UFO TOFU.