Sawt Falasteen - Yo-de-lay-UNESCO? Swiss hope for yodel heritage listing

As bound up with the myth of the Swiss mountain idyll as chocolate, Heidi and William Tell, yodelling will be examined for inclusion on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list when the UN culture body convenes from December 8 to 13.

Switzerland currently counts some 12,000 keen yodellers lilting their way through the style's distinctive topsy-turvy up-and-down melodies across 780 yodelling clubs.

Keen yodellers can also be found in the mountains of neighbouring Austria and Germany.

But unlike in 2020, when Switzerland teamed up with France to seek recognition for the Jura region's history of watchmaking, the Swiss have decided to honour their tradition of splendid isolation and forge ahead to seek yodelling recognition alone.

"This is important for the future," Markus Egli, choir director at the Buergerturner Yodel Club in Lucerne, told AFP on the sidelines of a concert in the picturesque peak-fringed city this week.

"This singing is part of our culture, of Switzerland's identity," he said, adding that yodelling began as "a means of communication between one mountain and another".

Yvonne Eichenberger, who sings soprano in the choir, explained that yodelling was technically taxing as it required switching swiftly between low chest notes and the upper octaves of the singer's head voice.

"It requires time and practise," the 35-year-old said.

From its bucolic origins, yodelling has since spread far beyond Switzerland's borders, with Swiss migrants influencing the development of folk and country in the United States.

And pop music has influenced yodel in turn, with one artist in the French-speaking canton of Vaud even hitting upon an improbable mash-up of yodel and Latin American music, christened "yodelton".

As well as being passed down by families and choirs, custody of the tradition has made its way into higher education, with students at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts having the option of enrolling in a master's of yodelling since 2018.

Q.Jaber--SF-PST