‘Yodelling Day’: Swiss canton celebrates UNESCO heritage status

Schwyz celebrates the inclusion of yodelling in the Unesco cultural heritage list Keystone-SDA

Canton Schwyz, in central Switzerland, celebrated “Yodelling Day” on Saturday to mark the tradition’s addition to UNESCO’s cultural heritage list. Among those attending was Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider.

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Yodelling classes and live performances drew hundreds of visitors, while teachers ran taster sessions for beginners at the Mythenhaus cultural and conference centre in Schwyz.

The “Yodelling Day” was organised by canton Schwyz in partnership with Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, the Swiss Yodelling Association, Roothuus Gonten and the Yodelling Forum.

The event took on added significance this year after the tradition was added to UNESCO’s cultural heritage list. It was first and foremost a celebration of Swiss heritage, but it didn’t stop there.

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Nadja Räss, a professor of folk music and yodelling at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, has long described yodelling as “Switzerland’s fifth national language”. But she told the news agency Keystone-SDA that the tradition reaches beyond Swiss borders. “People also yodel in Austria and southern Germany, and who knows, maybe one day it will be recognised on the UNESCO list as a cross-border heritage,” Räss said.

More than 12,000 yodellers

Yodelling was officially added to UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on Thursday. UNESCO praised the quality of Switzerland’s application and the strong participatory process behind the bid, according to the interior ministry.

Described as an “emblematic song of Switzerland”, yodelling spans a wide range of artistic expression and remains deeply rooted in Swiss culture, according to Swiss authorities. More than 12,000 yodellers belong to one of the 711 groups that make up the Swiss Yodelling Association.

The tradition isn’t confined to clubs and choirs, the interior ministry says. Contemporary artists are embracing yodelling too, “proof, it says, of a living tradition that continues to evolve”.

Translated from German by AI/sp

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