At Berlin’s Tiegarten park, just across the Brandenburg gates, the alpine sounds of yodeling travel across century-old trees, bouncing off the gravel ground — just far enough to make police officers perk up.
What caught their ear?
In between the iconic voice modulations of yodeling, the women singing slipped in a few untraditional lyrics: “F*ck the AfD”.
Elena Guzman and Gaia Schulze are part of the Jogida collective, yodeling as a counter-protest to a march for life across the street, opposing abortion.
Guzman described it as an “anti-feminist rally.”
“We yodel together against these people who want to destroy our lives in a way,” Guzman said. “I think it’s very important to come together rather than be alone in front of your screen and be angry.”
Guzman and Schulze also belong to “Esels Alptraum.” The name of their yodeling duo translates to “a donkey’s nightmare.”
While the name is playful, Schulze’s reason to join the duo and participate in the protests is serious.
“The rise of these right-wing parties is making me totally nervous. I’m 65 years-old now and I’ve lived my whole life in peace, in democracy. People can laugh how they want, be who they want. This is the kind of freedom I’ve lived in,” said Schulze.
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“At the end of my life, there will be lots of trouble and we will get rid of our freedom that we have had the whole time and this makes me very nervous.
“I’m afraid of it, I’m very afraid of it.”
They combat that fear through Jogida, which they describe as a gang formed to fight against fascism through yodeling.
“This combination is not so freaky for us. Because you raise your voice and free your voice in yodeling. A very liberal and nice society is the same,” Guzman explained.
“So the political struggle and singing, for us, is connected.”
Guzman says most people connect yodeling to conservative thinking and they want to rebel against that. “For us, we say we don’t give this wonderful global voice technique to the conservative people so we say ‘reclaim the yodel.’”
Dr. Sydney Hutchinson, research associate at Humboldt University institute for musicology and media studies, says there is evidence yodeling was used as a tool of indoctrination during the Nazi regime, appropriating German folklore.
“Yodeling is a part of German folklore and German traditional music,” Hutchison explained. “They [Nazis] used traditional music and group singing in a lot of different events, there could be mass singing at mass rallies, at Hitler youth events and especially at hiking activities.”
Hutchinson, who yodels with Guzman and Schulze, says that as she delved deeper into yodeling, she discovered a growing number of people across the German-speaking world trying to figure out what they can do to “reclaim” the genre. “To use it in different ways, to try to re-signify it,” Hutchinson said.
One of those people is Berliner Doreen Kutzke.
She became a yodel MC when she was 19 years old. As a DJ, she mixed traditional yodeling with techno music at night clubs she performed in. “They were all so surprised, you can guess, but I sometimes was hiding behind the desk so that nobody could see me, because I was also a little bit embarrassed,” Kutzke said.
Kutzke has now shed the discomfort and is on a quest to bring yodeling to the mainstream. She says she wants to strip it from preconceived ideas people have of it.
“Yes, that was always a mission of mine, bringing back yodel to the mainstream but also experimental music,” Kutzke said.
Kutzke has a platform to spread her message. Because of yodeling, she travels around the world.
She’s received invitations to yodel inside an empty fish tank in Iceland, inside a combat tank and a water silo in California, and she has taught in Japan.
She’s even done topographical yodeling compositions, which involve looking at mountains and modulating her voice over the terrain.
“Exactly, I was yodeling the peaks and the valleys,” Kutzke said.
Her next big adventure? Creating a yodel board game.
“With dice and cards and you have to yodel… It’s going to be super big,” Kutzke said with a smile on her face.
She encourages people to release the stereotypes they might have about yodeling, “to think twice and listen twice, because it’s beautiful music, she said.
Back at Tiergarten park, the Jogida collective packed their stuff and, at the request of police officers, moved to another location to continue their protest.
They came, they saw, they yodeled.
And while they were far from any alpine setting, Guzman and Schulze are determined to climb any political mountains to spread their musical message.
Gloria Henriquez is in Germany as part of the Arthur F. Burns fellowship program.
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