Everybody always talks about how yodeling is so glamorous, but nobody realizes how cutthroat it is.
I remember that naiveté, back when I was nothing more than a carefree girl with my hair in milkmaid braids. The Heidi of Ho-Ho-Kus, echoes of my yodel — ayyy — eee — ooo! rang through the Paramus Mall parking garage on Sunday afternoons. My “De Gumpesel” brought the parking attendant to tears.
I had a gift.
Yes, I got an early start. My papa says I started yodeling from the crib. But there is a point in every girl’s life when she has to make that choice — will she give yodeling everything it takes, or is it time to let go of such foolish childhood dreams? I decided I wanted it. And from then on, my life was consecrated to yodeling — vocal exercises, concerts and contests; echoes and falsetto; Wiener schnitzel.
One cold afternoon, I went to see Black Swan with my mother. As we left the theater, she turned to me, her arms covered in goosebumps.
“Patricia, if that’s what those girls were willing to do to become ballerinas, can you even imagine what they’d be capable of as yodelers?”
I shuddered, mindful that the road ahead would not be lined with edelweiss.
Yet, as the saying goes, I charged ahead faster than an ibex in an avalanche. And I took suburban Jersey by storm. First place in the Mahwah Yodeling Recounter. Blue ribbon at the Tenafly Austrian Concours. Top of the heap at Montclair Alpinefest. In New Jersey youth yodeling circles, I was untouchable: Der Champion.
Then, one day when I was sixteen, going on seventeen, everything changed.
I came home from school to find on my bed a curious brown paper package, tied up with string. The postmark was too blurry to make out. My heart began to race.
Buried inside, under a mound of shimmering plastic snow, was an invitation to appear on Alpine Idol. Three weeks, 30 of yodeling’s hottest stars, all of them competing to reach the highest peaks of Alpine musical megastardom.
No American had ever won A.I., or even competed before. Yet Hans, Friedrich, and Luisa, the infamous Idol judges, thought I just might have what it takes to be yodeling’s next superstar.
Within a week, I was boarding Lufthansa to Austria. The first few days were magical. There I was, in Mayrhofen, walking in the footsteps of giants, barely able to keep the stardust — or the goat dung — off the soles of my shoes.
But reality sank in quickly. After the first round, Friedrich (yes, he’s just as nasty as they say he is) upbraided me for failing to fit my dicke Schenkel (fat thighs) into my lederhosen. (They were two sizes too small and made out of, like, curtains.)
“You might have the lungs — but do you have the look?” Friedrich asked. It stung. But Hans — my champion — said he thought I could be the next Stefanie Hertel, and Luisa, sweet as Apfelstrudel, complimented me on my bearing (although honestly, she always seemed kind of high).
The other contestants got nasty fast. Magdalena and Annika, two beautiful and cruel Austrians who resented me for nosing in on their national pastime, spread nasty rumors about me.
In one vicious canard, Magdalena claimed that some folks (from a town that was quite remote) said they had heard “lusty and clear” emanations from high on the hill. These emanations were allegedly from me, making the goatherd feel a little less lonely. (The truth is that me and Christoph are just friends. He’s actually gay and has a long-distance boyfriend who lives in Thailand.)
Things got worse a few weeks in when, exhausted, I came in last in audience polling. This was due in large part to the fact that, just near the end of my performance, Friedrich yelled “olta,” halting my big finish to “De Jodelende Fluiter.”
I stormed offstage, right past Magdalena and Annika, whose smirks betrayed their schadenfreude. “I’ve had enough!” I screamed. “I heard you two talking shit about me at fondue last night.”
“We were not!” Annika protested, with faux sincerity. “We were just talking about a few of our favorite things.”
Soon, the intensity began to take its toll. Rising to the alphorn at 4 a.m. each day, I endured six hours of Niklas, my sadistic vocal coach, telling me I switched registers about as well as a paraplegic store clerk. Then, I sat for three hours in hair and makeup as Jana, my sadistic stylist, pulled my braids so tight that tiny spurts of blood shot from my scalp.
(Sadly, that old cliché about yodeling is true: Sure, you can call the cows from Appenzell, but can you coax the cowherd too? In yodeling, appearance is everything: the size of your breasts matters just as much as — if not more than — the size of your lungs.)
I was miserable. My dedication to yodeling was the only thing that carried me through.
For my final performance, I chose the modern classic “Über jedes Bacherl geht a Brückerl,” which, I think we can all agree, is about the most romantic song ever written.
Searching the audience as I wiped away tears, I found a little girl who looked just like I did when I was her age. I smiled, and, looking deep into her eyes, began to yodel. And my heart began to beat like the wings of the doves that rise from the lake to the trees.
In that moment, mid-yodel, I didn’t care whether I won or lost. I was in it simply for the love of yodeling — the purest kind of love there is. The sky was glittering with stars, and my lungs filled with crisp, sweet mountain air as I switched from chest to head register with all that I had.
But, just as I reached that final moment of ecstasy, I heard it — the womp of the alphorn, sounding me offstage. And just like that, it was all over.
No, I wouldn’t be the Alpine Idol. That crown went to Antonia, a busty barmaid from Bavaria. She had it all — the lungs, the looks, the panache. The trifecta of yodeling.
I headed back to Ho-Ho-Kus with my head held high. I hadn’t reached the top of the Matterhorn. But I had come close — and for me, that was enough.
Alpine Idol seems so long ago to me now. Yodeling is again what it always has been for most people — something to turn to when your heart feels lonely.
If you can yodel, you can bring the most ho-hum of hills — or even the Paramus Mall — alive with the sound of music.
Patricia O’Malley, recently inducted into the Tri-State Yodeling Hall of Fame, works as a systems analyst at TechnoMax in Jersey City, New Jersey. Magdalena is currently in rehab in Innsbruck, Austria. ♦