Austrian yodelers take their voices underground, turning a parking garage into the Alps

GRAZ, Austria (AP) — No mountains to practice on? No problem. Yodeling fans in Austria have moved their practice sessions to an underground parking garage, since it produces echoes like those they can get in the landscapes of the Alps.

“It’s not too dissimilar to the high mountains,” said yodeling teacher Anna Maria Gutschi as she led a group of 30 through an empty parking garage earlier this week. “You have wide hallways; you have walls that reflect a lot.”

Gutschi works for the Styrian Volksliedwerk, a cultural organization promoting traditional folk music in the southeastern Austrian city of Graz — which is not in the high mountains, but sits in a flat basin surrounded by hills and low mountain ranges at the edge of the Alps.

The group has been holding a series of courses on yodeling in unusual places to keep the tradition alive in modern times. Whether it is an underground car park, a canal or a gas station — as long as the acoustics work, up to 30 people are allowed to join each time for a unique experience.

“It’s a form of communication from mountain to mountain — just like that, without the need for a phone,” Gutschi said, describing the art of yodeling as she let her voice wander up and down the scales. “And it’s not as boring as writing an SMS. Sounds much better, too.”

“The energy is rising, it’s rising and rising,” Gutschi said as she explained the unique melodic tradition to her students. “Ever higher and then it wants out on top and there it goes.”

For over an hour, the yodelers walked through the city’s largest underground parking garage, practicing their yodeling skills until they had reached the deepest part of the garage — and the best conditions for a great sound.

While some participants were already experienced yodelers, newcomers to the craft also were welcome to join this subterranean class.

Jamey Sohn, from South Korea, who is studying sustainable development in Graz, decided to take the class to immerse herself in Austrian culture.

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“When I actually came here, it was a lot more — well, I wouldn’t say easy per se, but it’s a lot more approachable than I first expected,” Sohn said.

Yodeling emerged centuries ago as a way of communicating in the Alps over long distances — not just between people, but also between man and animal. Cattle would recognize their owner from his voice and return to the stable from far away. Over time this primeval form of singing has evolved into its own musical genre first made popular internationally by the U.S. musical film The Sound of Music.

For Thomas Button, a teacher who is originally from New York state, yodeling is “like a form of meditation. Singing meditation.”

“It’s hard to describe how much power you get from yodeling together, the energy from within,” said local yodeling fan Rudolf Schmidhofer. “The togetherness, the polyphonic kind of yodeling where you must listen to each other.”

“I’m still a student when it comes to this, but I like it very much,” he added.