Edelwyss-Starnen sing the last verse of Mys Alpli. High in the Berner Oberland, an alp is a field, a pasture, a productive piece of mountain land where animals can be grazed. Thus in the background of this you can hear the bells of the sheep, goats and cows. Available at itunes.apple.com/us/artist/jodelg…rnen/id329166348
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/217597274″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”250″ iframe=”true” /]
Mid July in the Berner Oberland Jungfrau Region–it is that time of year when the highest alps receive the animals for the ‘spring’ grasses.
I met a researcher in a Stubbe last week. He was researching linkages between humans and the landscape. He shared with me the following photos of yodelers.
Yodelers in the Jungfrau Region of the Berner Oberland in Switzerland–in the yodel, a human can hear and feel the landscape.
Yodelers demonstrate their respect for the landscape in all aspects of their lives–arts, crafts–and the richness of the detail recalls the richness of their feelings for the landscape. Stewards, custodians of the landscape–that is only the beginning in the Jungfrau Region of the Berner Oberland.
He noted that these yodelers are not hired professionals or foreign workers. They are humans whose families have lived in this landscape for centuries.
He posited that there are rootlets of some strange consistency that transcend the lifetimes of humans. Those rootlets, he said, were channels through which a music travels from the landscape through the voices of the yodelers.
Each verse of a song glorifies a different aspect of the relationship between humans and the landscape. And each chorus…well…the chorus is the landscape.
Pingback: Listen to ‘Mys Alpli’ | flahertylandscape
🙂
You made me think about yodeling, to see it in a different way. For us in Northern Germany yodeling is something like hillbilly. But a sound of joy when seeing an expansive field of wild flowers in bloom – I could understand that. I’m yodeling always inside so nobody hears me and takes me to the mental hospital, hehe.
Try this.
When you feel the joy of an expansive field of wild flowers in bloom…that is the joy on the inside of a yodel. It is not about the lyrics. The lyrics set a mood of reverence and quiet joy. But the yodel is a joy that is woven into the sound–a flow of pure joy–soft and mellow across all octaves.
🙂 Oh, well, back to work.
Oh, sorry to confuse : it’s an input technology which suggests the word being typed i.e. ‘rootless’ for “rootlets”.
Predictive text does not–I do not know this. Can you help me? Is that a software attempt to understand in advance? 🙂
Love the idea of ‘rootlets’, even if predictive text does not ….
very funny, even though I live in Germany, I find yodelers very weird (sorry)