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The yodel goes back to the dawn of man, whenever that was. And indeed it should. The yodel early on revealed its effective projection over long distances, and was heard by neighbors, fellow toilers, or herds.1 It was originally launched as an expression of necessity, joy, or the existential dread that no matter how hard you yell, you’ll never truly get close to others. This notion of a cry into the dark helping define the contours of the unknown isn’t that farfetched; yodeling serves as a kind of human sonar that fixes our relationship between being and topography. Many Africans believe sound has magical powers— probably everyone believes in the “magic of music” to some extent. They believe that human utterance can influence cosmic events—death, seasons, reincarnation, and the success of the elephant hunt.2 The syncretic spiritual-utilitarian-entertainment nature of song is undeniably commingled. Yodeling is found in many African cultures and nations, including the Bantus and Bushmen of eastern Africa.3 Ruth Stone describes how the Bantu and Niloti language tribes arrived in Tanzania from central Africa during the first millennium: “Before these migrations and the beginning of the Iron Age, Bushman hunters and gatherers inhabited most of Tanzania. Evidence of their presence is visible in the rock paintings of central Tanzania, near the territory of the Sandawe, Khoisan descendants of the Bushman population.” Polyphonic vocals and yodels are common among the Bushmen. The Black Voice Heard Blue around the World Go and learn to yodel, that’s the way to win a home —Mississippi Sheiks, “Yodeling Fiddling Blues”  THE BLACK VOICE HEARD BLUE AROUND THE WORLD  Stone further notes that San music, as performed by the !Kung of Angola, used textless vocal polyphony and yodeling with vocables, imitating “animal sounds, especially bird calls.”4 But it’s the yodeling of the various Pygmy tribes5 that has captured the imagination of the West via twentiethcentury recordings, igniting further interest through ambient music as Pygmy music lends itself to almost seamless inclusion in late twentieth-century electronic/ ambient music recordings. Pygmy music from central west Africa is primarily vocal, and consists of many yodel-like utterances. There are two distinct styles: the more “brutal” involves glottal attacks, grunts, and shouts combined with brisk movements between chest and head voices. The other is more melodic—the lullabies and greetings—and features melismatic trills and vocal vibrato that highlight a deep, fulltimbred “ah eh” chest voice, effortlessly leaping into a pinched “ee” falsetto. African yodeling employs vocables or nonsense syllables sung to imitate and respond to lead instruments, which lie at the foundation of jazz scat singing. Louis Armstrong was a pioneer of scat. Subsequent generations extrapolated Armstrong’s innovation, converting scat into vocal art. Charles Mingus peppered his compositions with shouts and “falsetto keening and other vocal eruptions.”6 The music of central Africans—specifically the Pygmies —is characterized by playful and fluid counterpoint .7 Yodeled melodies, call and response, and a hocketed canon are common features of communal vocalizations. Pygmy yodeling requires especially adept vocal cord control, which is facilitated by engaging the arytenoid and thyroid muscles in the larynx, which, when tensed, control their length and tension by extending or shortening them to produce two particular sounds: falsetto or the “arytenoid register” (head voice) and the lower or “thyroid register” (chest voice) for both men and women. These muscles also control volume and intensity with “the loudest possible sound [having] a greater percentage of arytenoid than of thyroid tension.”8 Call and response is a chief feature of gospel that migrated from field (holler) to pew. It consists of an opening melody (leader) and an imitating melody in a different voice (follower) but accurately replicating the rhythm and interval (the relationship between the pitches of two notes as either in unison and harmonious or as successive and melodic). The Pygmies’ intimate, interlinked, participatory style consists of improvised call and response, which some (e.g., Alan Lomax and Michelle Kisliuk) believe mirrors egalitarian-communal societies. Pygmy vocals comprise an intricate variety of sounds and effects involving pitch-change yodeling during communal vocalizing, especially Babinga Pygmy responsorial yodeling songs. Ostinato, a musical passage of repeated vocals in the same voice, is commonly employed as a rhythmic or melodic element. Pygmies enhance this cleave through their “lightning adjustment in the laryngeal muscles [which] is responsible for what we hear as two distinct timbres, popularly associated with so-called ‘chest...

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