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Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World
“Like yodeling itself, Bart Plantenga's book is wry, humorous, touching, irreverent, vivid, and unforgettable. In addition it is erudite without being stuffy, and is extremely well written. At last, THE book on yodeling!” • Ranger Doug, Riders in the Sky “YODEL-AY-EE-OOOO is an amazing, wild, and wonderful book. If there's anything to be known about yodeling since the dawn of recorded time, Bart Plantenga knows it, and he knows how to write about it -- wisely, humorously, and stylishly.” • Nolan Porterfield, JIMMIE RODGERS: The Life and Times of America's Blue Yodeler Inside the Secret History of Yodeling, Esquire Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo is the first book to view yodeling as a global phenomenon. It answers the question: How did a centuries-old Alpine tradition make its way into American country music? Along the way, the reader discovers that yodeling is not just a Swiss thing: everyone from African Pygmies, rhinestone cow-people, avant-garde tonsil-twisters, and Nazi Jugend SS, to pop stars like Jewel and Sly & the Family Stone to Bollywood star Kishore Kumar have been known to yodel. Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo features chapters on what a yodel is and sounds like, with further regional chapters devoted to Alpine yodeling, American cowboy yodeling, Eastern European, British, Dutch, Scandinavian, Bollywood, Asian, New Guinean and West African Pygmy yodeling, as well as yodeling in pop, Jazz, reggae, classical, techno, avant-garde circles, and film and literature. 
Singing Lesson: Yodel-Ay-ee – The Whole World Yodels. Feature on the book Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World by Diet Scholten [in Dutch]
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Review excerpts
• New Folk Sounds [NL]: A truly valuable treasure chest of knowledge about yodeling • London Review [UK]: wry, irreverent… Unforgettably odd • Musicworks: fascinating reading • Berliner Zeitung: Recommended Book for the Holidays • MTV.com: Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: serious but fun-to-read study • The Guardian [UK]: A splendid adventure… Plantenga’s style is loveable • Shuffle Boil, Jack Collom: This is really a terrific unprecedented book • Utne Reader Indie Culture 2004: A Few Great Reads / Books that help make sense of culture and art: Yodel-Ay-Ee-Ooooo: one of the most comprehensive books on anything ever published • Austin Chronicle: Plantenga manages to make the yodel fascinating in a wry and insightful read • The Wire: book will be exceedingly difficult for future yodel researchers to improve upon • Rolling Stone: An excellent treatment of an under-discussed subject • Washington Post: an uncharacteristic hit: Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo has attracted an audience of hipsters • Midwest Book Review: a lively reference unparalleled in the music industry • Booklist: his fascination with yodeling is contagious • Dallas Morning News: a delightful history of yodeling worldwide • La Liberté: [in French] an iconoclastic streak • Entertainment Weekly: solid, exhaustive look at yodeling • Vanity Fair: Plantenga cracks the secret history of yodeling wide open • BookSense: promises to be a classic for fans of music and pop culture • Amsterdam Weekly: surprisingly engrossing and humorous • NRC Handelsblad: simultaneously a thorough and coolly written study of yodeling • American Book Review: Plantenga – novelist, journalist, avant-DJ, Unbearable, and self-confessed Beer Mystic - has in this subject found something of an ideal match for his idiosyncratic talents, and the results of his detective work are seldom less than completely engaging…. Plantenga here does for the yodel what John McPhee did for oranges. Beginning with a brief technical analysis of how the true yodel is produced Plantenga spins off into a circumglobal musicological foray that is as captivating as it is unlikely…. It's to his credit that Plantenga's focus on the form doesn't simultaneously give him tunnel vision; he gives great attention to fixing the yodel's place within various times and cultures…. Plantenga's enthusiasm for world-class ululations is infectious, and should go a long way toward bringing new listeners to modern yodel-tinged musics… And in this knockout of a book, Plantenga has come close to providing the last yodel on the subject. • Library Journal Reviews: Writing like the manic, gonzo son of Nick Tosches, Plantenga here crams into his text just about everything one would ever want to know and then some about yodeling and yodelers. A DJ and amateur musicologist, he intends to trace yodeling from its Swiss origins to the upper registers of country, funk, folk, and pop, among other genres… As a thoroughly entertaining, throttle-at-the-red-line ride through the history of the various discrete styles of yodeling… this book scores a ton of points. The bibliography is thorough, and the annotated listening lists are highly eclectic and full of insight. Highly recommended for all public libraries and for academic libraries with significant popular culture or world music collections. |
Yodel-Spotting: Lapsed-Mennonites, Yodeling Truck Drivers, Japanese Carnivores in Lederhosen, and Soft-Core Tyrolean Yodel Porn [Brooklyn Rail, March 2006]: Dogs go through life following their noses from dog truffle to urine tag. I careen through life from yodel to yodel. Call it research, audio hallucination, or hyper-sensitivity, but I hear everything—anti-terrorism, the olympics, pop music, politics, sirens, “Bee-ah hee-ah” vendors at Yankee Stadium—through the ears of a yodel “expert.” Fixations, phobias, and zealotry give “purpose” to our wanderings.
Admit this outside of therapy or the confessional and people stare at you like you’ve got an open sore where your mouth once sat. The mission of my spring 2005 Midwest yodel tour was to further explode the constricted worldview of yodeling. Who yodels: Swiss, Dutch, French, Italians, Eastern Europeans, African Pygmies, South Americans, Hawaiians, Japanese, cowboys, Iranians, Siberians, Aussies, Brits. Where: country, jazz, blues, avant-garde, pop, rap, rock, techno, dub, reggae, house, ambient, folk, opera.
Admit this outside of therapy or the confessional and people stare at you like you’ve got an open sore where your mouth once sat. The mission of my spring 2005 Midwest yodel tour was to further explode the constricted worldview of yodeling. Who yodels: Swiss, Dutch, French, Italians, Eastern Europeans, African Pygmies, South Americans, Hawaiians, Japanese, cowboys, Iranians, Siberians, Aussies, Brits. Where: country, jazz, blues, avant-garde, pop, rap, rock, techno, dub, reggae, house, ambient, folk, opera.
Electronic Media:
• BBC Radio 3 “The Verb” with Ian McMillan • BBC Radio 4 • NPR Weekend Edition: Yodel 'Til You Drop by Robert Smith • NPR The Connection: Shoutout From On High, host: Dick Gordon • WUOM “Stateside” • WPR To the Best of Our Knowledge: Keepin’ it Reel to Reel: The Future of Music • WFMU Radio Thrift Shop: with Laura Cantrell • ABC Radio National [Australia], “It's The Night Air” • WNYC Soundcheck: Giving a Shout Out to Yodelers with John Schaefer • De Avonden on VPRO Radio 6: A conversation with Martin Minkema & then an hour live orchestral homage to yodeling with Jaap Boots • VARA Laat, Ned 3: Late-night popular TV variety show, with the yodeling off Kristina Fuchs • KGNU, “Musica Mundi” • WFMU, “Give the Drummer Some” • WFMU, “Dave Mandl Show” • NBC-TV [Boulder]: Local TV coverage of the reading, with the yodeling of Liz Masterson and Sean Blackburn [RIP] • ABC-TV, World News Now: Late-night national news program • RTV-NH: Dutch Regional radio talk show • WILL AM Radio, “Afternoon Magazine”: Chicago public radio • KNWZ • NOS Radio • VARA Radio 1 “Oog op Morgen”: Popular news-oriented talk show • Wisconsin Public Radio, “Here On Earth, Jean Feraca”: Syndicated talk show • WKEZ: Serving Southern Wisconsin |
Excerpts and Features:
• New York Times Magazine Special: 'The 6th Annual Year in Ideas' “Yodeling is Universal” by Meline Toumani also reprinted at Zing. • The KGB Bar Nonfiction Reader, edited by Mark Jacobson, Nation Books. "Yodeling: Velvet Throats and Leather Pants from German Proto-Hippiies to Jugend SS". • The Guardian [UK]: High on a hill ... • The Times [UK] • Michigan Today: biographical profile • The International Singing Brakeman Association reprints the Denver Post story "Give a shout-out to yodelers" • The Brooklyn Rail [1] : The Yodel that Ate Celluloid: A Short History of Yodeling in Hollywood • The Brooklyn Rail [2]: Yodel-Spotting: Lapsed-Mennonites, Yodeling Truck Drivers, Japanese Carnivores in Lederhosen, and Soft-Core Tyrolean Yodel Porn • Detroit Metro Times: Head Cheese • Library of Congress: Lecture in Washington in the LoC Mumford Room, featuring live yodelers Randy Irwin and Cathy Fink. • The Singer: UK magazine for singers • CanWest News Service: Yodel-ay-ee-ay-ee-ooooo -- The hot new sound! • Brabants Dagblad: “Jodelen botsing tussen hip en kitsch” by René van Peer [in Dutch] • Strictly Country, New Hampshire Magazine Granite State Yodeler - Bill Haley, St. Petersburg Times, MCD, Amsterdam Times, Amsterdam Weekly, New Folk Sounds. • Perfect Sound Forever: "EXTENDING YODELING’S VOICEPRINTS" is an article that investigates the new places and sounds of yodeling in progressive circles. • Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language, eds. Brandon LaBelle & Christof Migone, Errant Bodies Press. “Yodeling to Rouse the Echoes,” tries to extend our vision of how we perceive the yodel beyond it’s constrictive cultural cliché, appears in the anthology Also inc. Achim Wollscheid, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Christof Migone, Vito Acconci, Alvin Lucier, Elizabeth Slavet, Robert Ashley, Charles Amirkhanian, Gregory Whitehead, Jocelyn Robert, among others and a CD that inc. work by Marina Abramovic, John Duncan, Gregory Whitehead, Michel Chion, David Dunn, and others, plus a great piece by Vito Acconci. 
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