Drive-By Yodeling

the pre-proposal for a yodel documentary by Mark Boswell & bart plantenga: Far and wide / deep and shallow / sublime and ridiculous / indigenous music and pop music: This documentary on yodeling portrays both its depth and its breadth [not to mention breath]. One leads to the other. Fun, frivolity and joy linked directly to profundity, depth and meaning.

Yodeling’s mood swings [its breadth] are tremendous, from a festive Bollywood / Oktoberfest insanity to an almost monk chant minimalism [reflection on man’s relation to his surroundings / pagan] that is best exemplified by the melancholic natuurjodels of the Swiss yodelers. While it is [still] used by herders to communicate to their herds and/or other humans, it is also used by avant-garde vocalists to extend their expressive repertoires.

This will be the documentary’s strength, its motor, its drama. How do we as post-modern listeners deal with the dynamic tension, the tautological co-existence of the above-noted contrasting extremes? How can we better come to appreciate or understand a vocal style that embraces ALL styles of music and by an incredibly broad spectrum of singers: from jazz to folkloric, from Top Forty pop song to indigenous chant, from opera to techno. This spectrum and contrast plus its loving embrace of all music are what lend this film its vivacity.
This dynamic tension between our expectations/presumptions of yodeling as crass, annoying, and commercial, and on the other hand, what we come to discover – that it is a deep expression of man’s spiritual connection with his surroundings — will  hopefully leave behind the snap judgments based on clichés and allow the viewer to experience its DEPTH and BREADTH as part of the human continuum of human expression. Hopefully some amazement and astonishment will be expressed…

The major themes or aims of the documentary will be to:
• Establish the rich and variegated nature of yodeling [popular]
• Seek out some hints of where / why / how it developed [musicological]
• Present the many reasons WHY yodelers yodel –- fun, earn a living, distinction, challenge, curiosity, camaraderie, tradition, nostalgia, communication with fauna, humans or spirits [human interest]
• Reveal HOW people yodel via close ups, explanations and lessons [technical]
• Revealing the battle, the dialog, the to-and-fro between modern and traditional cultures. This involves manufactured notions of culture as remembered and reassembled to create a sense of imperfect or idealized identity based on a kind of diorama recreation of one’s culture. Some yodellers not only perform for outsiders and tourists but for themselves as they emerge as tourists in their own dioramas.

This means to portray yodeling in all of its richness: from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the frivolous to the utilitarian. And not being afraid of messiness of impure non-musicological portrayals. Depth is ensured by allowing yodelers to describe it as a communication with nature, or as a spiritual tool, as something akin to mantra as a means of communicating with the beyond. Depth would be further reinforced by portraying its use as ritual, as soulful communication. Meanwhile, various other yodelers can be shown struggling to explain what it means to them as they try to justify their commercial endeavors.