The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #113527 Message #2413916
Posted By: GUEST,leeneia
14-Aug-08 - 03:31 PM
Thread Name: yodeling and Yeats
Subject: yodeling and Yeats
Recent threads got me interested in yodeling, and I've been cruising Youtube, listening to people yodel. There's such a wonderful variety - Americans, German speakers, a Belgian. There's choral yodeling and solo yodeling. Comic and reverent.
I see yodeling as 'extreme singing.' It's people playing with their voices as if they were toys. How high can I go? How fast can I whip from high to low? How fast can I go? How much can I change the timbre of my voice between the verses and the yodel?
Here's a link to my favorite yodel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQH0fIMkqFc
This is an act in Nashville at the Grand Old Opry. The song starts out silly and ends with some of the showiest yodeling you could hope for, so be patient and listen till the end. But what especially delights me is the expression on the face of 'Ranger Doug.' Here we have a man in front of hundreds of strangers with a camera right in his face, and he is doing vocal gymnastics with the sweetest, most loving smile that I've ever seen on stage. It reminds me of the smile on a Buddha statue or the Mona Lisa.
That puts me in mind of the poem, Lapis Lazuli by Yeats. In the next post, I will put the relevant part of it.