I’ve been trying to find information on kwela whistle technique, and I keep seeing mentions on this forum of an interview with Dave Woodhead of a band called Positively Testcard. Unfortunately, the links seem to be broken. Does anyone have a working link to this interview and/or any other information on kwela technique?
I’ve gathered that a discontinued Hohner whistle (usually Bb key) was the preferred (available?) instrument, and that players hold the beak of the whistle inside their mouth at an angle to manipulate the pitch (often resulting in the whistle sounding a semi-tone lower). I’m not sure how that works, though. Worst case scenario, I guess I can just stick a whistle in my mouth sideways and start experimenting.
There are videos on YouTube of people playing Kwela (one example here). Players hold the whistle a long way inside their mouths and some partly obscure the window with their upper lip at times.
Somehow, kwela always makes me smile when I hear it.
I’ve also been quite fascinated by the window shading effect that they achieve by placing the whistle head in the mouth and using the lips to subtly shade the window so that you can blow more forcefully on the lower notes and get much more volume out of it. Its kind of like getting the equivalent of a hard D on a flute, but on a whistle. It changes the harmonic mix in interesting ways. And, of course, shading the window like this lowers the pitch of the instrument by almost a semitone. But more importantly, it gives the player dynamic control over the pitch, like a flute player has, because the window is effectively the whistle’s equivalent to the embouchure on a flute, and once the player’s lips are in close proximity to it, the player can very quickly acquire the skills and train the feedback look between ears and lips, to manipulate the pitch directly. As a flute player myself, I find this quite intuitive. But the whistle head’s shape and size is quite awkward to have inside your mouth when you play.
I’m surprised whistle makers haven’t changed the configuration of the head to make this technique more accessible. Well, actually, they have in some other genres, but not in ITM. I think it has a lot of potential actually.
So, just to elaborate a bit more on the concept of players using their lips directly to shade the window of a fipple flute, you can see fundamentally the same thing going on with the video linked below of Romanian kaval player, Winne Clement.
This Romanian kaval is essentially a low whistle with a different scale, but the relevant point here is that the head is configured such that the window is on the underside. This allows the player to use their lower lip to directly adjust the shading of the window and get the tone they want.
It is essentially the same thing that is going on with the kwela technique, except it is more comfortable for the player than the kwela approach in which the whistle head is inside the mouth and the whistle is held such that the tone holes are rotated at an uncomfortable angle in order to position the window where its shading can be controlled.
You can see that a good player is able to get a much wider range of tonal coloring than is possible with conventional whistle heads and playing styles. I think kwela players discovered the same thing on simple, mass-produced instruments, and just figured out what they needed to do to get the same effects.
Here is the short video by Winne Clement exlaining how this can be done on a Romanian kaval, and illustrating the powerful effect it can have. Hopefully, you can see the direct relationship here to the kwela approach.
It is amazing how robust those low notes are when you consider that these kavals have a very narrow bore aspect ratio and very low pitched. Here is a longer performance by Winne on the same instrument - obviously not kwela, but it shows the power of window shading. Just think what it would take to try to get that kind of tonal coloring and low note power from a low whistle using conventional approaches!
