Yodel ay ee-oh oh

I was killing time in a reception room the other day. After having exhausted all the news of the big George Clooney wedding, I turned to the Wall Street Journal, hoping to pick up the latest lively bit of scandal about interest rate setting at the Federal Reserve Board. Instead, I read a front page piece about the tensions within the yodelling community in Switzerland.

Yes, this column is about yodelling. It is therefore only fair that I acknowledge that some years ago I employed my allotted column-inches to make light of yodelling. I have therefore resolved never to make sport of it again, after this column is over and done with.

Yodelling, as every lonely goatherd who has watched The Sound of Music more than 27 times knows, is that sound of the voice that alternates rapidly between low and high pitches. The author of what appears to be the definitive guide to yodelling (Bart Plantenga, Yodel-Ay- Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodelling Around the World) notes its “unique, ear-penetrating and distance-spanning power.”

Its origins are thought to be European alpine, although there are African and Persian yodellers as well. And, of course, great cowboy yodellers come from North America.

But Switzerland is the country most associated with yodelling. Indeed, there is a Swiss Yodelling Associaton, which has some 21,000 members, and which holds a triennial yodelling festival. Therein lies the tension. The festival lays down strict ground rules for its prestigious yodelling contest. The accompanying instruments cannot be anything other than a harmonica or accordion, and correct costume must be worn, which for women means a dirndl—a peasant-style skirt.

Those strict rules leave out some important new wave yodelling artists. They include Christine Lauterburg, who performs with a fiddle, wearing a miniskirt and heels; and Christian Zehnder, who yodels to accompany a toy train, blends yodelling with Mongolian throat singing, and uses a milking machine as an instrument. No, I didn’t make that up.

Which prompts two questions. Should the Association be more inclusive? And the deeper question, which I will address first: is being associated with yodelling a good thing for Switzerland?

Is yodelling good for Switzerland? It might not be, because— let’s call a spade a spade—not everyone likes yodelling. Back in 1830, the British novelist Sir Walter Scott wrote that yodelling “is a variation on the tones of a jackass.” On a milder note, one British professor noted that yodelling “continues to appeal to popular musicians [insert comic pause here] when it isn’t being ridiculed.” On an even more restrained note, Thomas Hawk, a retired American business professor who specializes in cowboystyle yodelling, admits that the move into yodelling is not something his children are “overly enthusiastic about.”

I mean, can you imagine the desk clerk at our hip new Drake Devonshire Inn taking a call from “a guy who says his name is Franz from Basel and he wants to book a yodelling convention for next July. What should I tell him?” Who among us would begrudge a response that went something like “tell him we only have two rooms available for the unhip, and that we don’t carry muesli on the menu.” And if you did stick with yodelling, you’d also have to stay with lederhosen and the alpenhorn, wouldn’t you? By way of comparison, would America stake its national image on the horse-drawn carriage, the bridle and the buggywhip?

Admittedly, since the Swiss have effectively lost yogurt to the Greeks, chocolate to the Belgians and cheese to the Dutch, one could say the list of branding opportunities is narrowing somewhat. But they’ve still got watches, international cloak and dagger banking and the Alps, which aren’t relocating any time soon. Why not go with a brand that features a 30-something wearing dark, rolled up jeans, a Rolex over an armload of tattoos, bravely scaling the Matterhorn by bicycle in order to deposit the zillion francs proceeds from the sale of his revolutionary new smartphone app in a bank branch located at the summit?

Notwithstanding my heartfelt advice, if the Swiss do insist on sticking with yodelling as a way to identify their national brand, then my answer to the inclusiveness question would be to suggest they follow the words, if not the actual example, of Chairman Mao, and “let a hundred (yodelling) flowers bloom and a hundred schools of (yodelling) thought contend.” Call me a jackass if you will, but assuming that the world has been enriched in the first place by the invention of yodelling, then it can only be further enriched by the sound (and sight) of Christine Lauterburg, with her fiddle, miniskirt and heels; and of Christian Zehnder, with his toy train and Mongolian throat singing style. With or without the milking machine.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca