The Rough Guide to yodel
by Ian Simmons
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So, yodeling: possibly the most ridiculed and despised form of music known to humanity, and all collected together for your delectation on one handy CD...
This is probably the sort of thing many people believe they would listen to only if it were piped to them VERY LOUD as they lay blindfolded in a steel shipping container. It does, however, seem that yodeling is seeing something of a comeback, what with Sound of Music back on the West End stage and Gwen Stefani having a moderate hit with the goatherd-molesting 'Wind it Up', so this release is probably relatively timely. And surprising, if your image of the yodel involves lederhosen- and dirndl-clad mountain people tonsil-mangling over jolly accordions in the company of domestic ungulates, this CD will reveal just how far yodeling has traveled and, indeed, that it was not the Swiss who invented it.
Inevitably, there are some trad Swiss yodelers on it - Jodel Duo Rosy and Paul Hirschi demonstrate what the real stuff is like, and it turns out to be pleasant and restrained. (Appropriately, the duo came to a sad end when Paul died falling off a mountain some years back.) Elsewhere, there is Inuit yodel from Sainkho Namtchylak, pygmy yodel from Baka Beyond and also, rather arrestingly, from Francis Bebey, former director of the UNESCO music department, who produces a strange fusion of Suicide-esque electronics, yodel and lyrics that suggest he’s been taking lessons in sexual equality from Prince Buster. Elsewhere, there is dance/pop yodel from Christine Lauterburg, dub yodel from Alpendub and even Hawaiian/cowboy yodel fusion from the Ho’opi’I Brothers. All rather extraordinary and eye-opening.
When I was a teenager, a friend's parents had a single of Hank Williams’ 'Honky Tonk Blues', which introduces an element of yodel into the chorus. This obsessed us for some time, as we tried to sing ever-more extreme versions. Unfortunately, Hank doesn’t make it to this CD (and nor does Eno’s 'Seven Deadly Finns', with its magnificent multi-tracked yodel coda), but there is a rich strand of western yodel – from the Doris Day-ish 'Yodelling Addiction' by Janet McBride, through Gillian Welch’s marvelously languid 'My Morphine', to the cowpunk yodel of Laura Love. Even Fug Ed Sanders gets a look in with a sarcastic yodel called 'Yodelling Robot'.
However, I wouldn’t want to lull you into a false sense of security. There are elements of yodel that are every bit as appalling as you might imagine and they, too, get a look in. Particularly egregious is Carolina Cotton, whose over-jolly accordion-drenched showbiz take on yodel hoses you with every manically gargled cliché in the book and is unremittingly horrible (you boggle at it the first time you hear it, then lunge for fast forward ever after), and one or two other tracks are barely more listenable.
There seems to be a clear correlation between the amount of yodeling a singer indulges in and the tolerability of the results: those that use relatively simple yodels and apply them judiciously come out fairly well, while those who do nothing but yodel and go for ever more extreme sonic curlicues end up just annoying. Being excessively jolly about it doesn’t help either, so: yodels about morphine – yes; yodels about happy cowboys – no.
