Tootle of a Devilish Song

99% Invisible

The episode traces the historical trajectory of yodeling from its functional origins as an Alpine cattle call to its transformative role in

Key takeaways

• Yodeling is a physiological technique involving switching between head and chest vocal registers.
• Jimmy Rogers, known as the father of country music, successfully blended Alpine yodel with 12-bar blues progressions.
• During WWII, Switzerland used yodeling as part of 'spiritual defense' to culturally distinguish itself from Nazi Germany.
• The first known recordings of yodeling were actually captured in the United States during the late 1890s.
• Black musicians like Clarence Williams and Sarah Martin contributed significantly to early yodeling blues, though their history is often erased.

Main topics

• Swiss Alpine traditions
• Evolution of Country music
• The impact of tourism on folk art

Notable quotes

Yodlerfest is what I imagine people outside of Switzerland think the country is like every day.

Conclusion

A deep dive into how a simple vocal quirk can cross oceans and fundame

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This is 99 % Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. It's a sweltering June morning in Basel, Switzerland. Trams roll through the streets. Some people get their first coffee, while others cool off in the Rhine. Speaker 8 (0:19) I'm coming up here to the Münsterplatz. This is the big cathedral in the square. That's reporter and Basel resident Gabe Bullard. There's a group here of people in their traditional outfits, the dark pants, white shirts, suspenders with idol vise. Speaker 3 (0:39) But this isn't everyday Basel. Gabe is attending a celebration of Swiss folk music that happens every three years, called Jodlerfest. Speaker 2 (0:49) Jodlerfest is what I imagine people outside of Switzerland think the country is like every day. It's like a snow globe idea of Switzerland. People are in their long-sleeved traditional clothes, sitting at long wooden tables, eating meals that are mostly melted cheese, even though we're in a record heat wave. A couple times, I passed by one of those wood cutouts where you put your face through to take a photo. These are of a man and woman in traditional Swiss clothes out in the mountains. And everywhere I go, from every direction, I can hear yodeling. Speaker 3 (1:29) Some people here have been yodeling all their lives, like Anita Fieliger from central Switzerland. Speaker 1 (1:35) Yeah, I'm a mountain girl. I have seven sisters and brothers. And then we take yodeling and music for a hobby and family. Speaker 3 (1:47) Others are here to just bask in the sounds, like Francisca Morgan and Gabriela Santamaria. Speaker 1 (1:54) I've always found it very attractive, very beautiful, all that has to do with folklore. In any culture, folklore is like the best thing ever. Speaker 2 (2:05) Francisca and Gabriela live in the area, and I met them as they were walking between food stalls set up to look like mountain chalets. They had just come from a yodeling class, their first time trying it. Speaker 5 (2:24) That Speaker 8 (2:24) was wonderful. Thank you so much. Speaker 3 (2:26) Yodler Fest is, at its core, a celebration of an old and beloved folk tradition. Some of the melodies drifting out from the street corners and buildings are the same ones you could hear in a small mountain town hundreds of years ago. Speaker 2 (2:41) But beyond Yodelerfest and the streets of Basel, yodeling has had a much bigger and much more international arc. Because in the early 19th century, yodeling broke containment. This very Swiss tradition escaped the Alps, traveled across the Atlantic, and helped define a quintessentially American style of music. Speaker 2 (3:12) Most of us know what a yodel sounds like, but maybe not how it's made. That unmistakable sound of the yodel is the result of a physiological flip that happens inside the singer's body. Speaker 7 (3:22) Yodel is a singing technique where we use the different registers. So, for example, the head voice or the chest voice. And very typical for yodeling is to switch between that two. Speaker 2 (3:44) Nadia Ras is one of the leading voices, metaphorically and literally, of Swiss yodeling today. Speaker 3 (3:49) The register switch is something that happens naturally, even accidentally, like if your voice cracks while you're shouting. And people around the world have been making music with this vocal quirk for centuries. In Iran, Speaker 2 (4:02) it's called Tahrir singing. In Georgia, Krimanchuli. Speaker 2 (4:17) Within the Alps, different countries and even different valleys have their own unique versions of this singing. There's a classic Swiss yodel, which is markedly different than, say, an Austrian yodel. Speaker 5 (4:34) Despite Speaker 3 (4:40) what we know about its regional variations, the origins of the Alpine yodel are shrouded in mountain mist. Speaker 3 (4:49) History is just Speaker 6 (4:49) a loose end. It's in the dark. We cannot say it goes back to this and that century because we don't have written documents about it. We don't have artifacts like with musical Speaker 3 (5:02) instruments. This is Yannick Way, a musicologist who has studied Alpine music. He also plays the alphorn, you know, the horns that the guys play in the regula commercials. Yannick says that some of the earliest yodelers were probably cattle herders in the Alps. And one of the earliest possible references to yodeling is a document from around the year 400 that describes some Alpine singing as, quote, Uyulate Carmine Diaboli, which an Austrian folklorist in the 20th century translated as, Toodle of a Devilish Song. Speaker 2 (5:35) More reliable documentation picks up around the 16th century, when travelers through the Alps described a type of music unique to the region. In French, it would come to be known as Rendevache. and in German, Kurayen. Speaker 6 (5:48) In Speaker 2 (5:48) English, it's usually Speaker 6 (5:49) translated as cattle call, and this is sort of a name for a bunch of different music. Some of it yodeled, some of it sung maybe without yodeling, and some of it played on Speaker 2 (6:02) the alpine horn or on different instruments. The reason cattle herders were devilishly tootling up in the mountains is debated. Musicologists think yodeling could have been a way for those herders to communicate across long distances. Speaker 6 (6:15) So on the Alps, it was very scarcely populated territory. If you were working on the mountains, herding animals, it was maybe a very lonely thing to do. And you needed something to communicate over distances, both to communicate to other people that you are fine, that you are in. good health, and so on, and also to call cows and other Speaker 2 (6:42) animals. Another theory is that yodeling was part of religious ceremonies. For ritual purposes, for sort of, we could today say magic. And there's also the fact that it's just fun to yodel. Imagine you're out miles from your home with only the company of your herd. You can shout into the mountain air, and your echo answers back. Speaker 3 (7:09) For centuries, these yodels bounced around the Alps, entertaining lonely herders, maybe being sung in mountain taverns or around a family dinner table. But in the 1700s, a shift came that would help launch the yodel from a pastoral pastime into a global sensation. Speaker 8 (7:26) What that change looked like was a surge of interest from people who weren't herding cows. In Speaker 3 (7:32) the 18th and 19th centuries, European travelers were embarking on grand tours of the continent. Europe's young elite would drink wine, study art, and generally acquire a sense of worldliness to flaunt back home. Basically, a Regency-era gap year. Speaker 2 (7:48) Popular destinations included Rome, Paris, and the snowy expanse of the Swiss Alps. Speaker 3 (7:55) And with wealthy foreigners arriving to take in the sights and sounds of Switzerland, yodlers couldn't help but notice. Speaker 6 (8:03) It was also then an opportunity for people to make some money by performing in touristic locations, Speaker 2 (8:10) on the countryside, also on mountains. With tourism, yodeling transformed from a cattle call into a performance. Singers worked the yodel into songs, singing a verse and then yodeling a chorus, what's called the yodelied. compared to a