Echoes Of Home: On Yelping And Other Forms Of Song (Heimatklange) Review

It's safe to say that yodeling isn't generally taken seriously, away from its alpine birthplace. Okay, for a period in the 1970s Dutch prog-rockers Focus incorporated some yelping into their sound, but the main reaction to that was for people to go off and form punk groups in protest. And otherwise, if you think 'yodel', the chances are you'll think of men in silly waistcoats and sillier hats making daft noises to the accompaniment of twee Swiss folk music. At least, you will unless you watch this film.

Making a virtue of simplicity, the documentary makers allow three of Switzerland's most innovative yodelers to tell their stories in their own words - and songs. There's Noldi Alder, a former child star with the Alder Brothers, a fraternal singing group who learned their yodeling while working on a mountain farm with their father. He has since broken free of the shackles of strict traditionalism to create his own remarkable variations on the old-fashioned music. It's often arrhythmic and atonal and full of the kind of scratchy violin work that marks out difficult modernist music, but the sense of yearning and the emotional impact of his astonishing singing is timeless.

Noldi is a taciturn soul on camera so the bubbly good humour of his fellow-yodeler Erika Stucky provides a neat contrast. Born in the USA to Swiss parents, she is able to make fun of both aspects of her heritage and her own performances, particularly with regard to how much her yodeling embarrasses her young daughter. But she too, when she lets rip, sends shivers down your spine.