Berlin is alive with the sound of urban yodelling

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/08/berlin-alive-sound-urban-yodelling

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"Lasso your voices into the room," says Doreen Kutzke and, cautiously, a small group of women and one man throw out some throaty "eys". "Make it dirty, pretend you're having a snap at someone, put on your best builder's voice," Kutzke encourages them, as the group switches to ees and ooos, yos and hees, their initial shyness evaporating amid the noise.

Kutzke is bringing yodelling down from the heights of the snow-capped Alps and into the gritty urban setting of Berlin and beyond. Hundreds of people have attended her yodelling workshops throughout Germany, and in the Netherlands and the UK. "I feel quite missionary about it," she says. "I'd like to get as many people into it as possible."

Kutzke, 37, is holding one of her regular yodel seminars at a hairdressing salon in the heart of Berlin's Kreuzberg district, better known for its Turkish community and street art. Gathered in a small room warmed by a wood-burning stove, the barber's chairs pushed to the side, are a trainee social worker who won the session in a raffle, a potter who also sings in a Balkan folk group, a retired IT teacher and a civil servant.

The students are told how the technique demands the quick switching of the vocal chords from a shrill falsetto "head" voice to a gravelly "chest" voice.

"A bit like a cow?" asks the potter, emitting a drawn-out moo sound.

"Yes," says Kutzke, "except that 'm' doesn't exist as a letter in yodelling because it's too closed."

An "h", in contrast, is far more open and central to yodelling. The group practises throwing strings of sounds at each other, filling their lungs and pushing their vocal chords to the limit. "Pretend you're on mountain tops calling to each other," Kutzke suggests, plucking the tune on an autoharp.

Kutzke learnt yodelling as a child growing up in a rural community in communist East Germany, "where there was very little else to do", she says. She dropped the hobby in her teens, but picked it up again when she moved to the newly-reunified Berlin in her twenties and worked as a DJ in several of the city's underground, often illegal, clubs.

"I started picking up the microphone and just letting rip," she says. She called her new, gritty version of the vocal art form Alpine Dub. "I wanted to free myself from the folk music aspect of it, which can sometimes give it a reputation for being kitschy," she says. She teaches yodelling in every form, from country, blues and techno to classical and jazz.

Kutzke explains that yodelling evolved to allow cattle herders and shepherds to communicate across alpine mountains and valleys, but that its exact origins are unknown. "It is not just used in Switzerland, but also Afghanistan, Georgia, Siberia and Romania," she says, adding that in parts of Africa it is even used to chase away demons. "They say if a yodeller can fill a room, there's no place for demons."

As they slide from one note to the next, even mastering a yodelling version of Elvis's Blue Moon of Kentucky, some of the class ask how they are supposed to practise what is still, for many, not necessarily the most melodious sound.

"I think I'll have to go into my cellar," says the shy civil servant, echoing the German phrase that people go into their cellars to do things that embarrass them.

"I often yodel in my car," says Kutzke. "Particularly when I'm driving on the autobahn which I find quite stressful and it helps me to feel like I'm in control." Otherwise she recommends that her students "go to the North sea and throw your voice off the cliffs with the gulls – you'll feel much better afterwards".

Doreen Kutzke will perform at The Voice at the Wellcome Collection in London on 1 March.