Kansas City’s Kelley Gant has been whistling for most of her life. She says she was originally inspired by her grandfather.
“He just whistled around the house without thinking about it, and it was just, it was beautiful,” Gant told KCUR's Up To Date. “It was really special. He came from a musical family and didn't think he was musical, but he definitely was.”
Gant has turned her skill into an art form. These days, you can often catch her singing and whistling in Kansas City’s jazz scene.
And this weekend, she’ll take the stage in Los Angeles at the Masters of Musical Whistling International Festival and Competition.
While she’s there, Gant wanted to represent her home city, so she’ll be doing a whistling rendition of “Yardbird Suite” by Kansas City jazz legend Charlie Parker -- which she also performed live for KCUR’s Up To Date.
“I had sort of crowdsourced, ‘What song should I do when I go?’ And I got all these great suggestions that were classical tunes and I just knew right away, like, ‘Oh no, that's not even what I meant. I'm a jazz whistler,’ as if there were a thing called a jazz whistler. I guess there is, and that's what I am. So I just had to do something Kansas City.”
- Kelley Gant, musical whistler
