I’ve been playing about a year, still feel very much a beginner on the low whistle and am wanting to re-assess my learning emphasis. All the whistle tutors appear to start with jigs and reels before moving on to slow airs as more advanced tunes. The thing is I’ve been plugging away at jigs and reels - because that’s what players are supposed to start with - but I have no intention of playing in sessions, even if I could get the tunes up to speed on a low whistle, and don’t enjoy very many of them anyway. My love is for the slower airs and Spillane-like tunes. So . . . should I just skip the reels and jigs for the most part and start focusing on playing airs or are the reels and jigs an essential part of the learning process?
I wouldn’t suggest that there is only one path to whistle proficiency. So I would think you should play the music that inspires you enough to keep moving forward, whatever that may be. We all have different tastes. The realm of music is broad and the types of tunes available are very diverse. It’s surely not a matter of jigs and reels versus airs. There is a lot of music between the two and more beyond both of them.
One thing that dance music will do for you is to teach you how to punctuate a tune rhythmically. That will come in handy on the airs as well.
Play what you like and you’ll like what you play.
Happy Holidays.
As for myself, I find it very easy to tootle some notes of a slow air, but very, very difficult to play it in a convincing way. To paraphrase Feadoggie, crisp articulation and ornamentation and a good feeling for rhythm are really helpful - especially as slow airs are usually played in a rather free rhythm, and in a highly ornamented way.
Oh, and your wrong BTW - jigs and reels are much fun to play! 
Happy holidays indeed.
Thanks for your thoughts. I would agree that airs are “very, very difficult to play it in a convincing way” which is why I wonder whether I should spend more time on them, and less on jigs on reels, since it is for airs and slow Spillane-like tunes that I picked up the low whistle in the first place.
I would say “life is short” and you might as well play the music you want to play! You don’t owe any duty to “Traditional Irish Music” to play jigs and reels.
Whenever I have students on any instrument my goal is to help them to play the music they want to play. It doesn’t serve any purpose to ask people to hammer away at music they don’t like.
It is strange, isn’t it, how the slowest music is the most challenging to play? I learned this lesson when I was teaching at an Uilleann Pipers’ Club. After having the group work on a couple reels, which they grasped right away, I then proposed that the group learn an air. I think it was Roisin Dubh, which I picked because of its straightforward motifs and structure. Well I played the first phrase of the first part, and asked them to repeat it. I was surprised that they had great difficultly grasping the melody, and I ended up abandoning teaching the tune.
When I first set out to learn an air the tune strikes me as amorphous and meandering, but as I listen to the tune several times I begin to understand the structure and there’s an “aha!” moment when the thing is clear. Then I “have” the tune and can play it. (Needless to say I don’t write it out on paper… I wouldn’t know where to place barlines anyway, since the timing is so free.)
In my opinion an excellent source of airs is the CD The Ancient Voice of Ireland by the wonderful uilleann piper Mick O Brien. The album consists entirely of airs.