Try Whistling This

“In this collection, Andrew Ford delivers with such rare clarity and passion that even the self-confessed cloth-eared and tone deaf will be musically awakened and enlightened” – Richard Tognetti



Perceptive and entertaining, Try Whistling This is a pleasurable journey through music, ideas and history. Andrew Ford traces the concept of dirty dancing back to the sixteenth century, marvels at the weirdness of Percy Grainger and considers the decision of Wilhelm Furtwängler to keep conducting under the Nazis. He explores the intersection of words and music, the bugbear of Australian musical identity, and the fundamental importance, in music and in life, of listening.


There are essays based on Ford’s acclaimed radio series Music and Fashion, as well as illuminating examinations of music-makers from Mozart to Messiaen, Elgar to Brett Dean, Cole Porter to Bob Dylan. In Try Whistling This, a brilliant communicator offers a fresh take on music and changing times.


Andrew Ford is a composer, writer and broadcaster who presents The Music Show on ABC Radio National. In 1998 he won the Pascall Prize for Critic of the Year. Try Whistling This is his seventh book.