A New Look at Why We Sing Hymns

Enthusiastic and friendly yodelers from the next table gave us a demonstration during lunch in Bern, Switzerland as we sat in a café enjoying the cobblestone streets and 15th-century terraced buildings. They were two happy couples on their way to Interlaken to enjoy the 28^th annual Swiss Yodeling Festival in June.

We had ordered an Alpine specialty called kaseschnitte, bread sprinkled with white wine, covered with ham, smothered with cheese and baked in the oven. Yum. We never expected a serenade too while we were sipping our beer.

Yodeling was originally a form of communication between Alpine residents who communicated with their neighboring villages by using their voices in an extended note, dropping from a falsetto voice to a chest register and then going back to the falsetto. I’d love to know the content of those pre-modern communications. Did they yodel, “Hey come on over for some kaseschnitte” or “Run to the high country the Huns are coming.” Village to village communication with the unaided human voice sounded impossible until on our hikes I realized that they had serious help from echoes. In addition to the echoes the villages are not very far apart. We visited one village on a cliff only 1,500 feet above the neighboring burg accessible by a funicular that ran almost straight up on a serious steel cable.

The high-low vocalizing of yodeling was a melodious and joyful sound that evolved into music as well as communication! Yodeling songs combine singing in two part harmony and yodeling. The songs tend to start with a squeeze box accordion musical accompaniment and begin with singing that is punctuated with a chorus of yodeling, naturally in German. Although stereotypic it sounds to my ear ever so much like, “old a lady, old a lady whoo, do dit doo de doo de dah.”  They can’t help themselves, they just keep doing it. Yodeling sounds odd to my ear and even so, it makes me want to put my hiking boots on and sing along. You can hear a classical example of what I’m talking about on youtube!

Creatures of the earth are created to communicate and to sing and I learned more about that on my recent trip to Costa Rica. I was amazed to hear that white-faced monkey sing a hymn of praise at sunrise. It is a clicking, chirping chorus in which every member of the troop seems to participate with their own sounds, rhythmic, harmonic and very pleasing. It reminds me of a morning hymn sing, "Morning has broken like the first morning; blackbird has spoken like the first bird. Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning! Praise for them springing fresh from the word." (Eleanor Farjeon, 1931)

Howler MonkeyAnother chorus from the jungle came from the howler monkeys whose song is sung at sunrise and sunset. Theirs is a primeval sound somewhere between a lion's roar and a dog's bark but more eerie than anything I've ever heard. Clearly, the community's vocalizing together is a central part of being in a monkey troop and it is certainly done in ritual fashion. The can't help themselves, they just do it because that's what howler monkeys do! From my jungle hotel room I found myself weeping in bed at 5:30 a.m. as I listened to these sacred sounds. "Ah ha," I thought, "We humans who have climbed out of the jungle not that long ago have probably been calling to each other and singing and chanting together for more millions of years."

From my travels in the world I have learned many things. One of the most precious is gaining an understanding about why it is so satisfying to sing together in church. When we are in community with each other we must communicate, or call to each other, and vocalize together. It is one of the most fundamental parts of being a primate and we do it every Sunday because it is fun and it is traditional. Wow, I have no idea how traditional!

Copyright © 2013 Gayle Madison