A young yodelling choir between tradition and modernity

More and more young people are getting into yodelling. The Jutz youth choir wants to preserve this tradition, but also bring a breath of fresh air into the yodelling world. This is a balancing act. Anna Kölbener stands next to the piano in her parents’ living room and switches from her chest voice to her head voice – the change that characterises yodelling. The 25-year-old studied choral conducting in Basel and grew up in the municipality of Stein in canton Appenzell Outer Rhodes in northeastern Switzerland. “In our village, people have always yodelled or “zäuerlet”, as the natural yodelling is called here,” she says. Nevertheless, she would have liked to have been a boy as a child, because “here in Appenzellerland it’s special that girls and women don’t ‘zäuerlen’ like that”. Although there are women who do it, she explains, yodelling is generally linked to traditions there, such as the Silversterchlausen, and it is mainly men who actively participate. Women play more of a ...