Elena Kaiser just wanted to yodel, and living in central Switzerland, that didn’t seem too much to ask for. “But as a woman you couldn’t yodel in a choir unless you were already a professional; there were simply no options,” she says. There were also the words to the songs, portraying an idyllic Alpine life surrounded by pristine nature and overseen by a benevolent God, the men in charge and the women presented either as naive girls, self-sacrificing mothers or nagging wives. Kaiser couldn’t get past them: “The beautiful melodies with these completely outdated lyrics.”
So, in 2022, she founded Switzerland’s first feminist yodelling choir, and Echo vom Eierstock (“echo from the ovary”) has been rewriting traditional yodelling songs and dragging the Alpine folk music scene into the 21st century ever since.
While they have no qualms about changing the words, they remain lovingly faithful to the musical tradition underpinning them. Yodelling is characterised by rapid changes in pitch, alternating between a low-pitched chest voice and a high-pitched head voice. While yodelling calls – such as the “Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo” that most people associate with the Swiss Alps – were probably used by cowherds over millennia to communicate from one hill to another and bring in the cows, the Jodellieder, or yodelling songs, developed in the 19th century, combining verses with a yodel refrain.
The yodelling choral tradition was formalised in 1910 with the founding of the Federal Yodelling Association and became closely enmeshed with the country’s “spiritual national defence”, a cultural movement that sought to strengthen Swiss values and traditions in the face of rising fascism in Europe – hence the insistence on promoting an idealised version of Swiss life.
“We wanted to defend the country with our values, our traditions,” says Simone Felber, the choir’s musical director. “How do you do that? How do you reach people? With music, among other things.”
Today, the association includes 780 regional yodelling clubs, with about 12,000 members in total, and keeps a tight rein on yodelling traditions. Though there are also mixed and women’s choirs, the scene is still overwhelmingly male, says Felber. “The association is also very closed – it’s difficult to get involved as an outsider.”
While leading yodelling workshops across Switzerland, she noticed that many more women were interested in the practice than men, and when Kaiser reached out to her about the choir, she saw an opportunity to create a space where women of all backgrounds could yodel together regardless of skill level.
While Echo vom Eierstock is the most prominent example of a sea change in the Swiss yodelling scene, it’s not the only one. Last year, the Jodlerklub Männertreu, the first yodelling choir for gay men, was founded with the slogan “Where gays jodeln”, and Dayana Pfammatter Gurten became the first Swiss person to complete a master’s in yodelling, marking the transformation of a diverse grassroots tradition into an academic subject.
Felber herself, a classically trained mezzo-soprano who is exploring new possibilities within folk music through a number of progressive-minded ensembles, was honoured with a Swiss music prize in 2024, lauded for giving “a new voice to yodelling and Swiss singing culture”.
Echo vom Eierstock’s runaway popularity means they have also had to become selective, capping membership at 50. “This goes a bit against my philosophy,” says Felber. “But at some point, you’re simply at capacity.”
Carmen Bach, who moved to Switzerland from Germany in 2010, had long been interested in taking up yodelling, but as a woman and a German she felt out of place in the traditional scene. As soon as she heard of Echo vom Eierstock, she knew she had to try out. “I thought: ‘I can’t yodel that well and maybe I’m not enough of a feminist,’” she recalls. “But somehow I got in, and it’s fantastic.”
The choir brings together a diverse group of women, ranging in age from mid-20s to others well into their 70s, with some driving from Zürich or Berne for weekly rehearsals in the small town of Stans. While the choir is invariably labelled as leftwing, Bach finds that absurd: “We never wrote down a political agenda and said: ‘OK, we’re going to fight for feminism now.’ We just do it by creating and singing together.”
Yet the lyrics, wrapped in four-part harmony and a soft Swiss dialect, send an unmistakably feminist message. In traditional yodelling songs, “women are made out to be sweet, small, helpless, and defenceless when a man comes to call”, says Felber. “Which we’re not, and it doesn’t correspond with our self-perception at all.”
In the versions sung by the Eierstöcke (“ovaries”), as the choir members call themselves, a dance no longer automatically ends in marriage; the girl and boy in a love song become “me” and “you”, and instead of thanking God, another song thanks life itself. They sing about wearing short skirts and sometimes simply not giving a damn, and promise that “when [they] get paid too little again, [they] fight back and don’t stay silent”.
In one traditional song, a girl asks her mother: “Is dancing a great sin? Look, Franz is already waiting, may I go dancing with him?” and tells her later: “Don’t worry – I’m not going to be a nun; look at my curly hair! I saw how pretty I am in the mirror today.” In the version performed by Echo vom Eierstock, the conversation is a radically different one, with the girl asking: “Does the world need more children? Should we still be mothers in this day and age?” “The world is a gift,” her mother reassures her, but the daughter counters: “You don’t know in advance what kind of gift it is.”
At first, the choir commissioned local songwriters to rewrite lyrics, but over time a songwriting group has formed within the choir that does a lot of the creative heavy lifting. “We started small and are figuring things out as we go along,” says Felber. “It’s an ongoing process, and an exciting one.”
“It’s also what sets us apart from traditional choirs,” adds Kaiser. “We don’t say: ‘We’ve been around for a hundred years and we’ve always done it this way.’” Dissenting opinions and discussions are welcome, and in the end, matters are always settled with a democratic vote, says Kaiser: “After all, we’re in Switzerland.”
Unsurprisingly, the choir caused quite an uproar at the beginning, and received its fair share of hate mail. But after the initial shock subsided, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, says Kaiser. They’ve performed at numerous local festivals and venues, and last year even in the parliament building in Berne on International Women’s Day. Their work has also kickstarted some overdue introspection in the yodelling scene. “I’ve had people tell me that they’re listening to the words they’re singing for the first time,” says Kaiser.
At the heart of their work is a wish to make yodelling more accessible to everyone. A century after yodelling choirs were conscripted into promoting an idealised version of Swiss life, the traditions and customs associated with them are often seen as old-fashioned and reactionary. “Especially in times like these, I think it’s incredibly important to set a counterpoint to this and say: ‘You can yodel and you don’t have to be conservative,’” says Felber. “Everyone’s allowed to do it.”
Source: theguardian.com
