Tin whistle The whistle's fingering system is similar to that of the six hole, "simple system English flutes" ("simple" in comparison to Boehm system flutes). The six hole, diatonic system is also used on baroque flutes, and was of course well known before Robert Clarke began producing his tin whistles. Clarke's first whistle, the Meg, was pitched in high A and was later made in other keys suitable for Victorian parlour music. The company showed the whistles in The Great Exhibition of 1851. The Clark tin whistle is voiced somewhat on an organ-pipe with a flattened tube forming the lip of the
Tin whistle apartheid-era townships; the Hohner tin whistle was especially popular in kwela performance. The kwela craze accounted for the sale of more than one million tin whistles. In the late 1950s, mbaqanga music largely superseded kwela in South Africa, and so it followed that the saxophone surpassed the tin whistle as the township people's wind instrument of choice. Kwela master Aaron "Big Voice Jack" Lerole continued to perform into the 1990s; a few bands, such as The Positively Testcard of London, continue to record kwela music. Kwela sheet music is rarely published, and many of the recordings of founding kwela artists