[Little Bird]

Here's a not so positive mention of Jewel from Canada.com

Misty Harris, CanWest News Service
Published: Monday, November 06, 2006
The airwaves are alive with the sound of yodelling in what could be the unlikeliest trend to hit mainstream radio in decades. From chart-topping pop singer Gwen Stefani to hip-hop pianist Nellie McKay and hipster DJ Bart Plantenga, artists of every stripe are finding inspiration in the vocal stylings of mountaineers.

Although Billboard darlings such as Shakira, Bette Midler, the Cranberries, Jewel and Canada's own Alanis Morissette have been getting their falsetto on for years, it wasn't until recently that the sheepherder's cry of "yodel-ay-ee-oooo" evolved from geek to chic.

Stefani channels Julie Andrews in her new single Wind It Up, which leads off with an old-school yodel and sample of The Sound of Music's The Lonely Goatherd. Hip-hop pianist McKay unleashes an alterna-yodel on her just-released sophomore recording Pretty Little Head.

Plantenga, who has DJ'd everywhere from the anarchist Radio Libertaire in Paris to the highly influential WFMU freeform radio in New Jersey, recently dropped the compilation CD The Rough Guide to Yodel and is now in Switzerland filming a documentary on the genre.

And that's just scratching the surface of Alpine fever.

Platinum-selling hip-hop artist Mike Jones puts the ‘yo' into yodel on his rap track Cuttin. A jazz-infused yodel can be heard on the new Free Spirits' Coltrane tribute album For JC. And 11-year-old Taylor Ware yodelled her way into the top three on this summer's guilty TV pleasure America's Got Talent.

"(Yodelling) being put out there by the stars of the moment, young people are going to listen and probably think it's a cool new thing," says Norm Gwaltney.

For the past 10 years, Gwaltney, a self-taught Indiana warbler, has offered what's likely the Net's only Certificate of Yodelology through yodelcourse.com. He says trained singers tend to struggle the most with their yodelling education because they've been taught not to break their voices -- something required, on a controlled basis, to free one's inner Maria von Trapp.

But for those who push forward, the rewards are many.

"In small doses, yodelling is a fabulous way to grab the attention of your audience and express yourself," says Gwaltney. "You can't hear it or do it without smiling."

According to Gage Averill, dean of music at the University of Toronto, interest in yodelling has been bubbling beneath the surface for years. Although artists such as Morissette and the Cranberries weren't trilling "yodel-ay-ee-oooo" in their 1990s heyday, he says their use of vocal breaks as a means of expressing angst and a resistance to gender oppression played a key role in what we're hearing now.

Averill believes the current incarnations of yodelling on pop radio, however, are more about marketing than honouring the past.

"It's more like a plundering of recorded expressive history," he says. "Kind of a grab-bag approach to music."

Steve McLean, a Canadian music journalist and news editor at Chart magazine, says yodelling has achieved cult status through such rock classics as Hocus Pocus, a bizarre 1971 yodel odyssey by the Dutch band Focus. But he's unconvinced the style has the legs to dominate today's Top 40.

"It can make a neat little hook but it's not a truly pop art form," says McLean. "If any current artist was going to truly revive (yodelling), Jewel probably would have been the one to do it since she takes it seriously… But her career seems to be on the downturn right now."