Because of this original folk connection, yodeling remained associated with the outdoors, with rustic rather than sophisticated personae, and with particular emotional or psychological states or semantic fields.

[12] Although associated with the Swiss Alps and Austrian Tyrol, ethnomusicologists believe that the origins of yodeling can be traced back tens of thousands of years to ancient African nomadic hunter-gatherer societies.

[13] In Scandinavian folk music, the oral-song tradition Kulning (Norwegian: Laling), also called huving, is a form of signal song, a shout to make themselves known over a long distance, especially used in the mountains.

[21] In Romanian traditional folk music, yodeling takes the form of "horea cu noduri", mostly used by shepherds to call their sheep or as a way of expressing sorrow.

Ideal natural locations include not only mountain ranges but lakes, rocky gorges or shorelines, and high or open areas with one or more distant rock faces.

[citation needed] Technically, yodelling can be described as singing with melodious, inarticulate sounds and frequent changes between falsetto and the normal voice.

The constant change of register between the normal voice and falsetto produces a loud, piercing sound which makes the yodel an effective call for herdsmen to their animals, as well as to each other across mountainous terrain.

As the new settlers traveled south through the Appalachian Mountains and beyond into the Deep South they came into contact with Scots and Irish immigrants, Scandinavians (practitioners of a unique yodeling called kulning), and other nationalities including African enslaved people who communicated with "field hollers", described by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1853 as a "long, loud, musical shout, rising and falling and breaking into falsetto".

When the European Tyrolese Minstrels toured the United States for several years in the early 1840s and created an American craze for Alpine yodeling music, four unemployed white actors decided to stage an African-American style spoof of this group's concerts.

In Indianapolis in 1911 manager Tim Owsley noted: The Jolly Hendersons offered a clean, bright and snappy act of singing, talking and dancing.

[33] A 1913 St. Louis review reports: The Male Mockingbird, Charles Anderson, the man with the golden voice, is some character singer, imitator, and impersonator.

[32]Country blues singer Lottie Kimbrough, billed as The Kansas City Butterball (she was a rather large woman), sang in speakeasies and nightclubs.

[40] In 1923 and 1924, black performer Charles Anderson recorded eight sides for the Okeh label which gave a summary account of his vaudeville repertoire during the previous decade.

At one time the American West was an open range with thousands of cattle that needed to be watched over, branded, and herded and rounded up and driven to slaughter houses.

At that time he had moved to Texas and a publicity photograph of Rodgers wearing a cowboy outfit appears on one of the recordings he made with the Carter Family.

In the 1930s Rogers founded and sang in the group the Sons of the Pioneers "who through well-crafted romantic songs of the American west—often featuring three-part harmonized yodeling—created a new genre in early country music that was quite distinct from that of the so-called hillbillies.

Yodeler Hannes Schroll was the voice for the Goofy holler, a stock sound effect that is used frequently in Walt Disney cartoons and films.

[61] The DeZurik Sisters were two of the first women to become stars on both the National Barn Dance and the Grand Ole Opry, largely a result of their original yodeling style.

Patsy Montana (born Ruby Rose Blevins, 1908 - 1996) was the first female country performer to have a million-selling single with her signature song "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart", recorded in 1935.

[65] "Cowboy's Sweetheart" was again popularized in 1946 by Rosalie Allen, a "singing cowgirl" from Pennsylvania, who went on to host her own "western" radio show in New York City.

According to South African journalist Rian Malan: "Mbube" wasn't the most remarkable tune, but there was something terribly compelling about the underlying chant, a dense meshing of low male voices above which Solomon yodeled and howled for two exhilarating minutes, occasionally making it up as he went along.

The third take was the great one, but it achieved immortality only in its dying seconds, when Solly took a deep breath, opened his mouth and improvised the melody that the world now associates with these words: By 1948, the song had sold about 100,000 copies in Africa and among black South African immigrants in the United Kingdom and had lent its name to a style of African a cappella music that evolved into isicathamiya (also called mbube), popularized by Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

[69] It was covered internationally by many 1950s pop and folk revival artists, including The Weavers, Jimmy Dorsey, Yma Sumac, Miriam Makeba, and The Kingston Trio.

Some artists remained in their home area, but many traveled a circuit covering dozens of low-power AM stations throughout the country, introducing the various styles of singing to others outside of their region.

[87] In April 2018, eleven-year-old Mason Ramsey, from Golconda, Illinois, was caught on camera yodeling the Hank Williams hit "Lovesick Blues" in a Walmart store.

Bobbejaan Schoepen was an extremely accomplished, successful, and versatile Belgian entertainer, entrepreneur, singer-songwriter, guitarist, comedian, actor, and professional whistler.

Frank Ifield, an Australian-English singer, released a double A-sided single record, "Lovesick Blues" and "She Taught Me How to Yodel" in the UK in 1962.

[citation needed] Irish singer Dolores O'Riordan was renowned for her "natural" Celtic yodeling particularly in tracks such as "Dreams", one of several O'Riordan-penned singles from the five-times RIAA certified platinum album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?

[96] It can also be heard on most of O'Riordan's songs, especially on "I Can't Be with You", and "Zombie", the lead single from the seven-times RIAA certified platinum album, No Need to Argue.

[96][97] O'Riordan continued to incorporate her trademark yodeling in works throughout her career, as in the song "Black Widow" which appears on her solo album Are You Listening?.