Y is for Yodeling

According to my brief research, alpine yodeling originated in the Swiss Alps as a means of communication between livestock herders. It is a form of singing that alternates between the head voice (also called falsetto) and the chest voice, which is a normal singing voice. Yodeling was also used to communicate between alpine villages, but no amount of yodeling will cause an avalanche.

One of my all time favorite songs from childhood comes from one of my all time favorite childhood movies. "The Lonely Goatherd" (Rogers and Hammerstein, 1965). As a school aged child I would sit in the living room between the back of the sofa and the family stereo console belting out songs from The Sound of Music in sync with the well-worn vinyl record. I knew every word of every song. I even knew to account for the skips in the record. (Years later when I listened to the same music on CD, I was taken aback by the missing skips!) But my favorite song of all was "The Lonely Goatherd".

In the movie, Maria and the Von Trapp children sing and yodel while putting on a lavish marionette production for Captain Von Trapp and his fiance, the Baroness. Enterprising Max, a family friend, looks on hungrily, dreaming of the riches he could make promoting this family singing troupe, if only their father would grant his permission. The story of a young goatherd and his first crush is heartwarming, and the entire production riveting against the backdrop of the Captain and Maria falling in love with each other during the Nazi annexation of Austria.

Life Lesson: Singing feeds the soul, in good times and bad.