There is a musical skill accessible to almost anyone, and it crosses nearly all genres of American music — the simple art of whistling.

From the soulful ‘(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,’ the effortlessly cool ‘Pumped Up Kicks,’ to Snow White and her woodland creatures’ sunny tune, ‘Whistle While You Work,’ — whistling is part of the musical experience.

“Whenever I’m walking around this campus, I’m always whistling,” said John Wagstaff, head of the Music and Performing Arts Library. “Maybe it’s because I’m a musician, but I’ve always got music going through my head. And sometimes, I’m just so excited about the pieces going through my head, that I have to go and externalize it by starting to whistle.”

Wagstaff said whistling is a great form of self-expression, and is a wonderful, cheerful activity that lifts one’s mood.

Whistling’s benefits include the fact that it is great lung exercise, a mood elevator and a stress reducer, according to professional whistler Robert Stemmons in an NPR interview.

Wagstaff said that he personally finds whistling a great emotional release.

“I think that any type of musical activity that you get involved in is a stress reducer,” he said. “It helps your heart rate, circulation and breathing.”

Wagstaff said there is a social dimension to whistling. When you see one person doing it, you want to get involved. Similar to happiness’s infectiousness, whistling seems to have infectious qualities as well.

“I think it’s got a lot to do with exuberance,” Wagstaff said. “If somebody’s whistling, they’re probably quite happy about something … it’s kind of an expression of ‘Hey, I’m in a good mood.’”

While whistling is still a beloved pastime of many, it has declined in popularity in recent decades.

“When I was a boy, a lot more people used to whistle,” Wagstaff said, who grew up in England. While on a railway station, waiting for a bus or just out on the street, you would always hear people whistling”, he said.

Whistling had a historic and prominent place in work culture. Wagstaff said whistling was common in jobs that tended to be more manual work.

“Certainly in England … there was a kind of class sentiment to whistling. It was a very working class thing to do,” he said. “A lot of people who had blue-collar jobs, they seem to whistle a lot. And yet people who are more middle class, upper class, they didn’t.”

While whistling has made its way into mainstream music, such as Maroon 5’s ‘Moves Like Jagger’ or Britney Spears’ ‘I Wanna Go,’ whistling seems to not be held in as high esteem as it was during its golden age in early 20th Century Vaudeville.

“I almost think there is a little bit of a revival of whistling in some music, but it may be viewed a little more casually than it used to be,” said John Sterr, senior in FAA.

According to the music periodical BRIO, whistling was a popular form of variety entertainment on the music hall and Vaudeville scenes of Europe and America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many professional whistlers would whistle

songs as well as do birdcalls and other wildlife impressions.

“I think people liked hearing the whistling because they all felt like they could do it, and if they worked hard enough at their own whistling, maybe they could be just as good as that person on stage,” Wagstaff said.

Alice J. Shaw was the first and most celebrated of the artistic whistlers in the United States and Europe during the 1880s and the 1930s, the heyday of whistling entertainment, according to the Smithsonian. Other famous whistlers included Fred Lowery, Ronnie Ronalde and Joe Belmont.

In 1888, the early days of the sound recording industry, Shaw and Belmont were some of the first few performers to record their talent on the wax cylinders developed by Thomas Edison’s Improved Phonograph.

By the 1940s, there were half a dozen schools for aspiring whistlers, including the California School of Artistic Whistling in Los Angeles, established in 1909.

However, with changing tastes and the decline of Vaudeville, the novelty of whistling entertainment found itself becoming a forgotten art. Whistling, once a fashionable genre, lost the interest of audiences as American cinema became the new sophisticated source of entertainment.

While the days of Vaudeville whistlers are over, there are still many professional whistlers that compete to be become the International Grand Champion every year at the National Whistlers Convention in Louisburg, North Carolina, the world’s whistling capital.

With whistling off the stage and into pop songs, many may have ambivalent feelings toward whistling’s placement in songs. While some people may enjoy its catchiness and its informal welcoming vibe, others may view it as forced jollity, cheesy and even lazy.

“I can see how these days it can be regarded as a bit cheesy, but it just depends on the song,” Wagstaff said.

A song featuring whistling is usually a piece that’s very happy, in Wagstaff’s opinion. The person is kind of sauntering along in the park and enjoying life, he said.

Haemi Lee, junior in FAA, said that she likes hearing whistling in a song. Her favorite song with whistling is Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

“Sometimes, whistling adds a different texture to the music,” Lee said.

Although whistling’s golden age may have passed, Lee said she feels that people may enjoy seeing a whistling a cappella group at the University.

“It’s something different, and I think you need something different. I think just being different will make people want to go watch it,” Lee said.

Whether one wants to pass the time, participate along with a tune, or just get a song out of their head, whistling will always be an easily available emotional outlet and art form to practice and enjoy.