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Yodel in HiFi

author: 
Bart Plantenga
bookstore link: 
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book blurbs: 
Yodel in Hi-Fi explores the vibrant and varied traditions of yodelers around the world. Far from being a quaint and dying art, yodel is a thriving vocal technique that has been perennially renewed by singers from Switzerland to Korea, from Colorado to Iran. Bart Plantenga offers a lively and surprising tour of yodeling in genres from opera to hip-hop and in venues from cowboy campfires and Oktoberfests to film soundtracks and yogurt commercials. Displaying an extraordinary versatility, yodeling crosses all borders and circumvents all language barriers to assume its rightful place in the world of music.
“Chock-full of both amusing and informative sidebars, pictures, and accessible text that is both quasi-academic and popular, Plantenga’s book wends its musicological way across a diverse cultural spectrum that includes everything from yodeling’s traditional Bavarian alpine roots to a multinational cast of yodelers from Japan, Asia, various Arabic nations, Hawaii, and Latin America, along with the obligatory Europeans. . . . Strongly recommended for musicologists and music hipsters everywhere.” —Library Journal
“A triumph of cheeky erudition that demonstrates beyond any doubt the international ubiquity of goofy yet profound chest-to-head vocal acrobatics in a legion of longstanding, continuously evolving musical styles. Bart Plantenga is an original thinker and a truly gifted writer blessed with vision, wit, and passion.” —James P. Leary, author of Polkabilly and Yodeling in Dairyland