The first time I traveled solo, I was 15 years old. A shy and budding tennis player, I spent two months crisscrossing Austria, Switzerland, and Germany via Eurail on a junior tennis tour.
29.08.2023 - 14:27 / nationalgeographic.com
Yodeling has been practiced probably for as long as humans have expressed themselves through song. But the singing style synonymous with Switzerland and its Alpine neighbors hasn’t always been a crowd-pleaser.
In A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain wrote, “During the remainder of the day, we hired the rest of the jodlers … not to jodl anymore.” Fellow 19th-century traveling man of letters Sir Walter Scott was even more scathing when, in an 1830 journal entry, he likened the sounds to “the tones of a jackass.”
Despite yodeling’s historical detractors (Roman Emperor Julian wasn’t a fan either), ancient forms can be found all around the world, from Scandinavian kulning to Iranian tahrir and Hawaiian leo ki‘eki‘e. In Switzerland today there are around 20,000 official federal yodeling society members, plus a triennial festival that draws up to 150,000 fans to enjoy competition in not just yodeling but also alphorn blowing and flag waving. It’s so ingrained in the culture that the government is seeking UNESCO cultural heritage status for it.
Yet as ubiquitous as it is, yodeling can’t seem to shake its bad rap. Even in Switzerland, some say the mostly male practice represents a bastion of traditionalism that needs to change with the times.
Is yodeling so hard to love, or is it just misunderstood? Is it destined for dusty music libraries, or will a new generation bring it into the modern age?
In pastoral times, the loud, rapidly trilling vocalization was a way for Swiss mountain herders to call their livestock or communicate between villages. In the 19th century it was a form of European music hall entertainment that traveled the globe, becoming popular particularly in the United States.
Nowadays there are essentially two forms of Swiss yodeling. The naturjodel is a wordless melody said to express the feelings of the mountain people in distinct regional dialects. The jodellied or “yodel song” is a more modern style influenced by 19th-century vocal aesthetics. Typically, it comprises a few stanzas of text about rustic-romantic things like mountains and flowers, followed by a trilling syllabic refrain. Deviation from these norms is generally frowned upon within the Swiss yodeling establishment, as embodied by the Eidgenössischer Jodlerverband (EJV), the federal yodeling association.
Dutch-American music writer Bart Plantenga is perhaps the world’s leading authority on yodeling. He has dedicated a large part of his life to seeking it out, including in Switzerland, which he hails as “a spiritual center for yodeling.” Plantenga stresses the importance of not letting preconceptions cloud people’s understanding of the art form. “A cultural prejudice has accumulated from clichés about what [yodeling] is,” he says. “No, it’s
The first time I traveled solo, I was 15 years old. A shy and budding tennis player, I spent two months crisscrossing Austria, Switzerland, and Germany via Eurail on a junior tennis tour.
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