yodel, type of singing in which high falsetto and low chest notes are rapidly alternated; its production is helped by the enunciation of open and closed vowels on the low and high notes of wide intervals. Yodeling is also used as a means of communicating over moderate distances by the inhabitants of mountainous regions. It is associated with the Alpine peoples of Switzerland and the Austrian Tirol. But it is found also in other mountain regions (e.g., in China and the Americas) and among the Pygmies of Africa and the Aboriginal peoples of Australia.
In Alpine folk singing, yodeling—frequently mixed with nonsense syllables—occurs in passages called Jodlers, which occur at the beginning, middle, or end of a song. The origin of yodeling is buried in antiquity. It has been suggested that it originated as an imitation of the music of the alpenhorn (alphorn), but this point is uncertain.