Oh, I don't know about that one...I think you'd find more than plenty of people in Ireland who are not a bit too fond of tinwhistles...Martin Milner wrote: In Ireland every child (I think - correct me if I'm mistaken guys) gets at least some musical instruction on the tin whistle, and somehow it does not leave them with a life long aversion to that instrument.
Sometimes I think the whole anti-recorder thing gets so boorish and silly. As an instrument, it's as good as any other and I don't see any reason why it could not be developed to play in the traditional Irish idiom just as well as a whistle.
Any instrument, if forced upon you as a child, can result in lasting indemnity in that child's memory. I wanted to love the piano and I wound up hating it for years...
When I was living in Japan, the Ministry of Education enacted a plan to require all Japanese middle school students to study traditional Japanese instruments. I think this is a profoundly stupid idea--mostly because it involves teachers from other disciplines being forced to learn the basics of the instruments themselves and then teach the students. How is a 13 year old going to develop any interest or appreciation for the shamisen if they're learning it from a burnt-out old science teacher who doesn't give a s**t about shamisen music?
All that being said, when I first started learning whistle and going to sessions, there was this bodhran and recorder player there who went on and on about how much better recorders were than whistles and he annoyed the living hell out of me...