A while back Dale mentioned somewhere that LE McCullough had a new book of tunes available. It’s called Whistle Around The World, and it would make a really great last minute Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/whatever gift.
The book is subtitled " 50 tunes for pennywhistle or flute from all over the world!" and that’s exactly what it is. Australia to Wales (LE-- ya should have included Zanzibar!) with stops in between in Brazil, Cuba, Hungary, Japan, Peru, Trinidad, and many more.
There is a nice introduction which describes many of the types of flute played around the world, and each tune is preceeded by a short description of the tune, and the types of flute native to the country of origin of the tune.
Most of these tunes are VERY simple as written. A beginner would enjoy this as an opportunity to learn some new tunes. However just as the written notes of Irish music are only the bare bones of the real tune, so these simple world tunes can be fleshed out with ornamentation. On the CD which comes with the book, LE plays the tunes fairly simply and slowly but you can hear hints of how these interesting pieces should be played.
The book/CD set is available at the usual places, I’m told.
Here, with the author’s permission, is a sample page I scanned from the book, with two tunes:
