PART 1

The conversation takes place in the Bar Lord Byron. I tell Nicolas that I heard of his capacity to yodel through a friend in common, Gosie Vervloesem. She heard him sing at several diner parties. Nicolas says it may be also that she heard him sing during a presentation in a residency in Brussels. He was exploring the notion of copy and the original. It involved also a copy machine. During the preparation he became aware of his link with a cultural heritage, that so far was quite unaddressed. He decided to sing a Swiss folk song in the presentation.

Before the recording started I also told him my story about the Swiss Embassy, who when I called them for help at finding yodel singers were rather aloof. They said I’d might better contact the Austrian Embassy.

BEGINNING RECORDING

Nicolas: Through this residency.. I probably remember. I have an interaction with xx a Brasilian girl, and we were talking about belonging, so where do I belong to, in reference to the layers of copy, and how to refer to something original. Tracing back what you are. Is that somehow possible? Then I remember that after a chat with xxx she left and I went home and I remembered songs, folk songs, I realized that this is probably a point where there is an echo of this belonging, this feeling of ‘yeah, I come from somewhere’. I am removed from that quite strongly, I am not a Swiss person anymore, I don’t relate so strongly to Switzerland, but there are these glances where I feel I have a connection to a certain culture and landscapes related to this culture.

The song came spontaneous. I started to sing it and I realized ooh that’s where the belonging resonates.

After the discussion you find yourself singing. Does that occur quite often?

For me that’s the case. I am an associative person, if it’s songs, a person, smell, an image, yes, that pops up. I don’t think that’s totally unnormal. So it happened and I felt that there was something where I can really feel myself touched by a root. Then I told this story in the presentation. I referred to the song and started to sing. For me to sing this song for a Belgian audience was emotionally moving, specially because my girlfriend and my daughter were there. I was singing to her. My daughter was suddenly very quiet and they were listening to these songs. You know, there’s some…

There’s a huge discourse on cultural heritage and transference and translating, with all the critique.

Yeah, it was a beautiful moment.

Especially.. with my daughter I decided to speak Swiss German, and that includes a lot of songs. This is something.. and she loves songs, and we sing a lot songs together.

Did she know the song already that you sung in the presentation?

The song is a little bit a hard song, that one she did not knew before. It’s a love song, and very sad. A sad love song.

Do you know the lyrics? I can sing it, if you like, but it’s not a yodel. Most of the songs that I am talking about.. it’s hard… it’s sometimes going into yodeling, but most of the things are rather, have a nature sound, a Natur Ton. I am not sure if this is the right translation. It does not follow the chromatized scale, it follows the natural sound. All the sounds.

It sounds a touch disonant It takes the quarter tones into account and plays with an intonation that is slightly a bit wrong in our chromatized ears. If you have one string and you take it in a half and you take it again in a half, like the natural sounds come out, you come into an algorithimc scale and not the regular scale as the piano was constructed in Bach times. Most of the original swiss sounds are based on natural sounds and the yodels as well. Otherwise it would not work, because you need the overtones.

8:05 The Alpenhorn Fa? Yes, that’s it. You can only guide the wave in the horn through this natural scale and not through the chromatized scale. That is not possible; so you have a different scale that makes it so atmospheric.

Is that why you say that your lieder have a touch of the yodel songs Yodeling is a very technical thing, in the whole scale of songs. Yodeling is working with natural sounds. But the songs I am referring to, do not always include yodeling, and sometimes you can apply a yodel in it, but you don’t have to.

The yodeling is a tricky thing for me. It’s often referred to as kitsch. Swiss national songs or often used in a conservative, traditional way, and in a very commercialized way. There yodeling, you will probably hear the most yodels in this commercialized sense, and most of the times it is also crappy yodeling.

The Swiss embassy was trying to distance themselves from that. It’s what the Japanese love and laugh about it, about Switzerland. The old alpine songs that pastiche Switzerland. I have not much to do with that. When we think about that… when we are conscious of culture and the musical heritage in the culture than we refer to yodeling which is ‘that thing for the Japanese’. And all the rest is other worlds. So if you go to Switzerland ask them not for yodeling but Zaüerli. They don’t work with the glottis if I am right, but also with the head and chest singing, in a very spheric way; You really have to hear that, to experience that. Like the Alpenseege. I experienced it once or twice when I went walking and slept in the mountains and heard in the evening the farmer stand upon the hill, standing on a rock and starting to pray for his cows. He calls them back, but it’s a kind of praying. He’s calling Maria, Mother of God. I cannto remember the song, but things like ‘keep my cows alive and healthy. Give me food’.

This is new for me, because I know about the cattle call, the catilena, coming from a very functional need, really calling to the animals, who have particular names and respond to this particular names and sounds. But so far I have never heard of prayers accompany it.

This song is called the Alpsegen, it’s a pledge. On internet we can hear it and if you like we can analyze the text.

15:00: sings an example.

They are free singing, improvising, a very long sound goes through the valley, touching the other mountain, coming back. Really amazing to hear that.

The first years of your life, where the songs originate… are you from a town, Sankt-Gallen? I was born in Bern and when I was twelve we moved to Sankt-Gallen. I had my childhood in a city, and then my teenage years in a town. It was because my father got a job there. It is perhaps a bit similar to Ghent with 8 or 9000 citizens.

To what extent the landscape, the rural has an impact here. Here in Belgium we don’t have strong rural areas. Is there a same polarity in Switzerland between city and countryside. There are no big cities in Switzerland. Everything is little, even Zürich, that’s not a big city. Middleland is very suburban agglomeration of town. Mosty Switzerland is not so rural anymore, even if people try to get that image up. I think you have more rural areas than Belgium. Here it’s rather very ugly, I have to say.

But probably it’s something similar. Then there are really far off places in the mountains, in the Alps, where you still can feel nature. Here it’s a bit simiilar. In the Ardennes you can find nature, some very beautiful places.

I am missing the mountains. I am longing for a hike, a longer hike. I am not sure it’s because I am Swiss. Yes, I had those experiences, and I miss also other landscapes and countries where I had those experiences. But obviously I had in my childhood strong experiences, and I knew it geographically quite well. I know the names of the mountains, the valley, where they connect, the passages, the rivers. I had some language fun.

In between you sent me the email I was wondering why is she going into yodeling, and I was thinking what relation to it I had. It’s not that I feel, in connection to these songs, that they belong to me or that I am directly connected to them. I realize that they are more like a desire. They are much more something a desire for the roots. I am not sure.. it’s rather something that I am hearing somehow far in the back of my consciousness.

It’s the background sounds of a being.

Myriam proposes to change table, where there’s electricity to feed her zoom recorder

PART 2

You were speaking about that you connect with that so much, less from memory than desire.

It’s quite a distance there, quite a big distance. I don’t feel that anymore that I think that this is me. I feel like somehow this is a beautiful part of the culture I was once in. And to the landscape a bit as well. I was grown up, I find myself more related to petit Bourgeois, Bildungsbürger, in a little urban sense. The music was Swiss punk rock. That was my idea of what was part of me. But these other moments which come also out of the region where I grew up… I didn’t practice with them. Yeah, we were sometimes singing some songs, we probably learned them in school. As kids or from parents or grandparents singing to us. I wasn’t practicing them. When I am singing them now, it’s rather a discovery.

You bring back something that you never really owned, but you still have enough access to it I probably have a window because I understand the language, the sound and I understandthe surrounding of where it comes from. I experienced it and I have somehow a window to it. But I was born 200 years after these songs were created, and came into play into social habit of Switzerland, and it went into a kind of nostalgia. This nostalgia is a touching element, that I have access to, but it’s not mine.

The fact that you emigrated - Can I use this term?

Sure

Does emigration make you react differently than people who have stayed? My parents live there still, and also my brother, but he feels disconnected in a very different way.

Friends of Nicolas come into the bar and greet him. They just have seen a concert

05:56 She is interviewing me about yodeling?

The friend asks: And can you yodel? Yes I can. perform a sort of imitation of yodeling He is a bit of yodeling, naturally, because he speaks so girl imitates Myriam: But isn’t this more an English accent. They speak also very melodic? ✎00:06:2700:08:13

Myriam: I don’t know where you got your English, where you practiced it?

Rather in England, yeah.

Myriam: I was asking: is it a fact your imigrating has fueled that economy of desire? Because I was reading this book Future of Nostalgia of Svetlana Boym and she explanes that the more you feel that there’s a rupture of some sorth, the more it actually… the more desire and also nostalgia is spurred.

No, for me…

Myriam: And that’s why modern … created so much nostalgia, because it’s a continuous succession of rupture.

I can imagine that, but no, I think for me, the impact to have kids triggered that much more.

Myriam: To have kids?

Yeah. Kind of the question like where am I coming from? It produced so much kind of memories. It really procreated memories, because I just remembered standing through, interacting with kind of two people and that would be changing. I kind of suddenly remembered that images came up from my childhood which are probably stored in somewhere… probably which I’ve made up, I don’t know.But also kind of triggered sounds. ✎00:08:1300:09:32

Myriam: Memories of ??? also?

Yeah, yeah. So many things. Kind of many cultural inherited things. The interaction with her. And also the reflection about where I’m coming from. What are my roots finally? What kind of roots do I automathically translate to her, transfer to her being. I’m not aware about what I want of that or not. So kind of a … And just also this kind of question which language do I speak with her? And finally it’s a decision.

Myriam: What’s your language?

It’s Swiss German. It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, where? She could speak with her grandparents probably Swiss German, but… Whenever we probably decide to go back to Switzerland. Then probably it makes sense that I speak Swiss German to her. If we stay here, if we go to Germany, if we go to somewhere else… which is much more likely than going back to Switzerland. Then you can’t use this language. ✎00:09:3200:11:00

So it’s something, it is my mothertongue, yes, it is apparently very important, kind of pedagogicly very important to speak your mothertongue properly to the kids and have this reference point in order to develop a proper language skillin her. Yes, but it is definitely also to translate some kind of rules, where she suddenly connects to something which is hers.Where she has this kind of resonance. Which I probably as well have. Yeah, it’s culture. And if she is now getting here culture, roots and so. And if she get’s culture from my girlfriend… You know, this kind of deeper rootings, this is richness I think, so, yes. And I refer to this nostalgia, even if I have a distance to these things, to this cultural heritage, I think I consider it as a richness… of knowledge, somewhere in my being. Because I have these windows. I can open these windows. ✎00:11:0000:13:21

Myriam: But can you yodel?

…

Myriam: You reacted a bit like “yeah, sure”. How did you learn it? Talking about translation and passing on and…

Finally I’m trained as singer so I had kind of a lot of singing classes, most classical singing. And I did some overtones singing and things like that. So I have kind of a trained voice, a bit. And I also was dealing with nature sounds a bit.

Myriam: But then you speak about training, really, like from your training.

From my teacher, yes. I never trained yodeling. And I have a bit an idea or rather an assumption of what it is and I kind of produce it with some songs. But to do it real, I would need a certain surrounding. I was a little bit kind of embarrassed now. Yes, okay, I can do it, but not here now. That would be kitch. This feeling which I would refer to or have to decide or have is this kind of possitive feeling, would be somewhere destroyed in the kitch. You know what I mean? You don’t turn around and just produce it. ✎00:13:2100:15:48

It’s like when you go to Amerika everyone says like ‘say once Hugi Gestli’ yeah? Or ‘yode once’, or… you know?

Myriam: But that’s out of, I mean, that’s a certain prudence or wanna resist the clichés or whatever. But there’s also something…

I realize in there a kind of a tone of what I finally ever would kind of refuse, but a tone of proudness. About that. Let’s say, like with the Sylvesterklausen where you will go to. This is really traditional and it’s a really folk thing, but it’s fucking bizar. It’s fucking fantastic. It’s really something, it’s not something, see it’s something, I think, to put that in a tourist context, it suddenly doesn’t work anymore. It’s probably something, when you think like: you go to America and you go to an Indian show, dance show. You feel a bit embarrassed because it’s totally obvious that it is totally cliché and kitch. Even if they say it’s really like the original, however, it’s so detached, it’s so not anymore that thing. But then there is something in the surrounding of my culture which is kind of honest. There is something honest. There is something authentic. The assumption that there is something authentic in the back of my cultural heritage. It’s hard to resist to be proud of it. Do you understand what I mean? Kind of funny. ✎00:15:4800:19:15

Myriam: It is fucking bizar. I mean, it looks… It’s very funny, but at the same time it is promoted, it is produced… from a political spectrum which I would definitely not support, that is the right wing. It’s the Swiss National Party. It’s promoted, they support that.In many sense these cultural heritages is covered by this political spectrum. And covers it.

Myriam: How does that work, that promotion?

And it’s hard to enter it from a kind of a undergrow or a leftish position.

Myriam: How does that work, this support and this promotion and covering? In what way? Because of course I can understand ideologically speaking how that is used as something emblematic or traditions. But is there… yeah… where does that happen this promo…? Do they get subsidies? Is it euh…?

No, for example, a funny fenomena…

Myriam: Do they do that on congresses of the party?

No, no, it’s not that big. I’m not sure it’s the Sylvesterklausen. I think it’s euh, if I’m right, in Appelzell the Christen Democrats, a very conservative party as well, are much stronger than the SVP, which is kind of the Swiss Peoples Party. But they are not radical right wing. They’re not that ???, they’re kind of distant, it’s a centered right wing party. A prototype traditional… yeah. And I think they are much stronger and I think this is kind of happening in this frame. And I suppose that it is still quite open to everyone. ✎00:19:1500:24:37

Another example… can’t remember when… There was a guy, near Appenzell, in G…burg, tis is somewhere between Appenzell and Zurich, who wrote letters to Shakespeare. Fictive, he knew he was already dead. But he wanted to respond to his pieces. He read all the pieces and he knew them very well. And out of his kind of rural position, out of this Swiss, rural, pre-industrial position he wrote kind of feedbacks. Which is great, which is really cool. Really weird. Very interesting feedbacks. And really analysed the pieces and wrote what he thought about the pieces and so and so. Really great. I mean, it’s fucking good body of text, you know, to work with. But obviously this was, this is a big shot somehow. And the Swiss Peoples Party, the leader of them, so kind of the Bart De Wever from Switzerland, Mister ???, he is an extremely rich person. As yeah, he’s really one of the most rich people in Switzerland. And it’s very very dumb and very polemic. He is culturally engaged in this sense that he let rebuild the ??? in Toggenburg, in a rural countryside. And they replay Shakespeare in the sense of Ulrich Braker there, in a very traditional, very conservative way of seeing the play. And that cost a lot of money, and he promotes that and he promotes him. And it’s totally covered. You can’t touch that ground anymore. Because it’s gone, it’s taken out of your hands. If you do you’re constantly in this dumb of…

Myriam: Today I read a little book called The Moiré Effect by an author who’s family name is Shaw, his first name I’m not sure. Very recently written and it is by this Swiss phographer who wanted to really to have inventions in the say second have of the nineteenth century, first half of the twentieth century. He came a couple of times very near, he was very near, but he forgot the patent, you know, it was a bit a tragical figure. And then, instead of becoming known for the genious he was, he became known for falure. Which is, when you print certain photo’s, you have this moiré effect, this dotted… This moiré effect was when he got a big commission from the government to photograph say many of the early prototypes modernist engineering and building and architecture. And what came out was like dotted moiré reproductions, so… The rest of his life is a big mystery and so on and the book takes his life as an investigation and recounts the young historian, it’s like a thriller sometimes, it’s very nice. I will give you…

It would be nice yeah, really, very nice. I love moiré effects.

Myriam: Really?

Yeah, I think it’s, you can translate it in so many structures. Yeah, it’s really great, I love it.

Myriam: Did you know about Ernst Moiré? ✎00:24:3700:33:04,149

The government does not like the reference to him, so he’s obscured from history.

Yeah, that’s amazing.

People entering the bar.

At some point he’s sitting in the castle of this rich family - I even know the castle.

**And they made it in a hotel. Greenblatt, a shakespeare expert, is staying there and he tells the author about his method of shooting with a ball into the libarary, and the reference it hits will be the angle from which to discuss a part in shakespeare and work with intertexuality.

He also goes to Appenzell and he stays in a hotel Alpenhoff, and he briefly recounts a woman who said that she feels very uncomfortable about the yodeling and that only after 65 years now - the book is written recently in 2002 or so - that it was so tainted with nazi and right wing, that you simply could not when you were opposed to that ideology that there was no way to give it a place. The author tells that even when she had her explanation that the woman when talking to him gets worked up, she gets agitated by trying to defend for herself that ‘we did like it’ but in a private way. Nearly speaking of it as a private thing, because the public terrain is too slippery.

You go into that direction when you speak of the political parties, the appropriation, etc, but do you also have that on the level of your personal life. She could hardly even like it, it was not done. It’s only reemerging now from those layers of taboo.**

She was from Appenzell? How old was she?

She must have been in her forties, it’s not made explicit,

because I would say now. I wasn’t referring yodeling to Nazi’s but yodeling to commercialization. There is for me, the dirt, that’s the enemy, the dirt on yodeling is coming from this side and not anymore from the nazi appropriation.

YOu can make lines between these two fields but it’s a different tone. But obviously yes, let’s say, the Swiss national party, they — the swiss people party — this is right wing and they appropriate strongly the whole folk music, but again yodeling, is not folk music. It’s much too specific it’s own thing. Yodeling happens in very different spheres.

It is not necessarily a musicla ground or doing chores at home, the cattle, singing prayers… not strictly speaking.. music is part of it’s use, but if you would look at Naturyodel, I would call it folk… I am trying to answer you when you say it’s not folk, by guessing that it’s used in other non-musical areas of use

I mean folk music has a huge range that doesn’t touch the technique of jodeling at all.

But yodeling is part of that range

Yodeling is part of folk music. Can you say that? Yeah, probably.

It interests me. When it’s not commercialized what else could it be then folk?

Yeah, probably you would say folk.

I don’t want to be a smart ass here, it’s just that I am trying to… Probably technically speaking that is true, but euh I would even say that either it is quite commercialized or it’s not that popular. And if it’s not that popular I question whether it’s folk music, because it’s of the folk, it’s not carried by a big population, it’s quite a specific thing.

If you go into Zaüerli, not many people are able to do it, and not many people are really touching that ground. It’s something that you have to discover. Not everybody in Switzerland knows about Zaërli or the AlpSeegen. While commercialized yodeling everybody knows about yodeling of course. ✎00:33:04,14900:34:14,505

But, not many people could sing a song where yodeling would be applied. So there’s not many practitioners.

They have yodel clubs and you would see them in their traditional clothing and there you would see that it’s commercialized or politically instrumentalized, but if it’s taken authentically, it’s quite an anthropological study. Therefore I’m hesitating to call it folks music. You understand what I mean? ✎00:34:14,50500:36:29,762

In different areas you would do it differently and the alpseegen in Bern or in Appenzell are different because the dialect is very different.

I would say that there’s for example one song, probably one song, where most of the people would refer to, and it’s difficult beautiful and it’s a folk song, and I’m relating to that. I even know the first lines of it and it has this nature sound yodel thing But that’s it. One or two. One from Bern and probably one from Glorus. People know it because of Stefan Eicher he sings these songs. It’s pop music. His pop version is quite known. But the other one I would say, yeah, there you not, everybody knows that it’s not only kitsch. It’s a song, an evening song for the cows and euh it’s it’s also religious but not in the first phrase. You don’t have to touch this ground. I can sing it if you like. ✎00:36:29,76200:37:23,109

Sings

Now ✎00:37:23,10900:39:35,492

How sound can create vastness. Beeerggen.

Is it a lullaby? It’s really an evening thing.

You sing it finally… it is also a kind of alpseegen, it prays for.. the lines of the song are quite simple. Look from the mountains to the valley. You see how the last sun ray is fleeing. You see how the shadows are growing, how red the mountains are. And then it repeats that.

I cannot remember the secodn phrases, but it’s about let bring the cows back into the barn. Again, god help us.

That’s alpseegen.

It feels like it’s not, the way it’s structure, it does not feel it’s meant to sing outdoors.

Yes, it’s very much. Probaly we should try to do it outside.

Singing is context ✎00:39:35,49200:45:37,685

Nicolas, when you say you are a singer by training. is that the profession you learned.

No, I am an actor and a stage director.

I thoguht you were a writer, a theoretician, and plenty more of things.

NO my background is theater. Then after the director’s training I finally I had a lot of the power position in the city theater in germany and I tried to integrate more projects with people. It’s the first years after school, i tried to put myself in most of the positions that you can have in a theater structure. I was writing, making set design, making music, technician as well, and also singing, the full package. I was singing in opera’s, and I did the extended voice stuff and then I went into performance art, where everybody was responsible for everyone.

Voice was often an important thing.

I had several collectives in Berlin, in the performnace art, and then finally I felt the need to understand what I am doing and integrate theory in practice. I did a master in england, so that’s why. I then went into much more into theory, and worked resarch-based. I was very much in process and researching and very much with the question what is artistic resarech. That opened my contact to apas. But the aim was to think of our working methods, the way how we create knowledge in a togetherness, to describe that, to understand that, and to put it to paper, to see how other people would apply. i want to see that as a longer journey to get it back in production, not in a classical arty sense, but in applying artistic research in other spheres. ✎00:45:37,68500:51:57,459

Does this need come - go from theater, actor into experimental work. What made you feel drawn in the first place. What were the moments that triggered that path.

I don’t know where I should begin? Sahall I begin where I was playing with my first girlfriend when I was nine, when I was making a playback version of the magic flute.

It’s quite ambitious for a nine year old.

We were both totally fascinated by it. We totally went for it.

At that age I was playing with a doll that was called heidi.

It was there at my parent’s place and we put it on.

So or, and then later on, there were several steps into theatre, this kind of shift from Bern to SanktGallen was a huge shift in my life. This geographical move. Before that I was a very dreamy person. I couldn’t really relate to any kind of scholar duty.

You were a bad pupil at school? I am very dyslexic I am still but that was much more dramatic in Bern, If i had would have stayed in Bern I would have had a very different life. The shift to Sankt Gallen made me suddenly into a very social person. I got the chance to open the window and get a big shift in my life. I suddenly could see mtself as a social person and before that, definitively not.

I had different scholarly degrees and I was very engaged in the cultural scene; I made puppet theater at the age of 16 with friends and other adults.

Was there an art scene?

There’s a good art scene. I think it’s a crappy town, and I wouldn’t want to live there, Probably everybody thinks like that in switzerland But i really belive that there are some special figures there, and some very good artists, well known which come from there, and some artists who are there and who do nice and good work who are known. Simgar, he’s from there. He really takes from teh appenzell culture whatever he can and takes that ate and takes the humor of it, totally from that region. He has a big feeling for Silvesterchlausen. The whole scene of the explosion, his crash,

I see that as a link I don’t know how. ✎00:51:57,45900:52:45,106

Yeah. I have a feeling for it and I am sure you could find it. I have an intuition for it.

No, it’s great. Through this analogy, we haven’t even described it yet, but suddenly you come to this explosion. Let describe this.

When did yo usee it for the first time? ✎00:52:45,10600:53:44,689

I have only seen them once. We went once with the family. When I was fourteen. I cannot remember. It’s just nextdoor, but we went only once.

We are in sankt-gallen and that was Appenzell.

So on one side… no, yeah, and euh ✎00:53:44,68900:55:10,359

no, that’s what I mean. It’s rather - coughs - I am not a practitioner of that.

But I know of it. I can open this little door and think wow.

When I much more feel the link to it in fact is for three years we had a group of kids who did it. there are these silvesterchlausen with the big heads and teh huge stuff, but in a much bigger area, in Graubunden and Talinn to Sant-Gallen, so the whole eastern part there is this tradition that kids take a bell around their neck. ✎00:55:10,35900:56:31,385

and they wear grey clothing and in the 31st of the morning, the morning, they stand up very early, two or three oclock in teh morning, and they run around with the bells, and make a huge mess and sing songs under the balconies and people give money. The fundraise for charity or for a barn they want to build or whatever. This is a tradition

Myriam speaks about 3kings in Flanders ✎00:56:31,38500:56:46,884

So, and yeah, for two or three years I did that with friends. It was definitely totally fun. ✎00:56:46,88400:58:41,186

i found money as a kid very fascinating - and how it comes and goes

It’s not a nice characteristic but I was totally fascinated by gaining money for the sake of it. Yeah it’s fascinating.

It contained all kinds of songs. I cannot remember. It’s possible that we even sung It never rains in California (laughs)

It’s nice, I like that, because it shows that even in switzerland there’s all these bastardizations..

That’s why. To really go for it, not many people do it, and it’s a huge kind of foreign knowledge that not many most people don’t have.

I would say they have this window.

This entry where you can feel touched in a sense which is probably different than everybody else, not having grown up there. ✎00:58:41,18600:59:01,353

There’s probably really like cultural heritage. For me to understand Flemish people, what are they, what is this thing. It’s probably talking what windows do you have that I don’t have. ✎00:59:01,35301:02:36,025

When did you leave Switzerland.

I went off in 2000.

It’s not that long ago.

The whole 90s I went on and off to Berlin but I still lived in Switzerland. and in 2000 I could not bear anymore living in Switzerland I had to leave.

At that time you were living in Zürich

The rent became very expensive; The scene that I was attracted to was disappearing because everybody needed to have good jobs and earn money. The scene was quite tight and it was hard to get subsidies if you did the other stuff. I had the chance to go to eastern germnay. I went to a place called wismar at the xxx and I think that it was a very strong experience. Already before through the whole nineties i had a lot of approach in Berlin and Leipzig. I could have gone to an actor school in Leipzig but I decided not to go for that because it was too conservative, but i still kept a connection with leipzig. And then I went to wismar and through that i have a window, trhough this experience, to understand what it could have meant it to be grown up in the ddr. So the thing with these windows.. I have a smell, I have a taste of the ddr time even though i never had been there at the ddr time. I had somehow a window.

I think this is possible to get. This window is probably much more open for somebody who was born in 89 in DDR or in the area. The window. But I had a taste so I could imagine. ✎01:02:36,02501:04:50,097

The thing with these windosw? Before i tried to describe it as desire. It’s something where you feel touched, somehow you feel another spectrum of culture. I don’t know. But it’s kind of these entry points to a sphere of… this opens my horizon, a richness that you feel in teh possibility of your identity.

I really want to compare these two experiences. They are differently open, they are differently charged.

But, my window to yodeling or my two windows to yodeling - the negative and the positive one - it does not have that much to do with the fact that I have a swiss passport, I experienced something for a certain amount of time, and I can do that much less to american hillbill music. I still have a little bit of window open to that, because I had a couple of experiences… ✎01:04:50,09701:07:45,199

I think.. it’s not related to the passport, but it has to do with some experiences yes. I am sure the most important are subconscious but I had some near contact to a guy called Pauli Giegen, that’s his name? He was playing often, he was a very good friend to Jan Garbarek, he was at the violin and he used mainly fagolet sounds to create jazz music. and he has a very strong link to the nature sounds and the zauerli and the whole appenzell culture, he even made improvisation, framed improvisations for topography of appenzell, he is very strongly into this culture. A friend of mine was a student of his… and I heard many concerts of him. Yeah, and I got a sense of it. He was a window to a certain understanding.

Abother window was when I heard the farmers sing the alpseegen. We were hiking and went overnight and were sleeping there, and this guy goes on teh rock and sings for half an hour. You cannot distance yourself from that, because it’s so beautiful.

Yes, these are windows. ✎01:07:45,19901:08:27,471

Very interesting metaphor. It explaisn being slight removed from it and at the same time you see it you could open, but do you. There’s the desire that is fundamental.

Yes, and it can be triggered because when you hear it you suddenly have the feeling of it again.

What do you do with this window, knowing that you became aware of it. What then? ✎01:08:27,47101:09:30,850

Is it something you want to open the window more? Or you live in the house of many windows and you are cherishing. Like the sublime, you have the experience of the abyss and you are on the edge, and will you jump, not, because you enjoy it from a safe place. Heritage and culture as a place near the window, but we take a spectatorial position. ✎01:09:30,85001:10:34,983

Yeah, I am, no, I mean, it becomes different possibilities, with having a kid. Suddenly there you are much more confronted with these windows, and also it’s a possibility to act them out. To sing the swiss children songs, and not to sing them as a stupid thing, but as something honest. I recently remember a song, it’s amazing, really amazing, I probably cannot remember the whole thing. ✎01:10:34,98301:11:40,940

Sings a song. with falerie falera. That’s the first strofe. It’s a very beautiful song and it’s talking about cherries. I know a place where they are they are green and red and yellow ones, and two or three on one branch or twig. ✎01:11:40,94001:12:11,125

The second phrase: sings ✎01:12:11,12501:12:35,553

It’s not everything about a new pair of clothes or a new pair of shoes, it’s also not about being beautiful but everything lies on doing well. That’s the second prhase ✎01:12:35,55301:13:05,716

I am not rich, I am not beautiful, I don’t have anything to give, but god is with the uggly ones as well and one day he will think of me. ✎01:13:05,71601:13:39,977

This is… this is so… hard you know. It starts with cherries and then it opens up the abyss of somebody finding his love and hoping that some day there will be someone for him aswell. ✎01:13:39,97701:14:53,085

The silvesterchlausen. They also have the ugly ones. For me, I come from a big background, it’s very important to have ugly and beautiful as a polarity, it’s a big thing and this is before cosmetic culture.

But look how elaborate the traditional clothing is. HOw long people are working on that, and it was definitely in a farmer’s community a big thing to have beauty or not, to be part of the game or not. ✎01:14:53,08501:18:32,432

I propose that I do a second talk when I come back from Appenzell to check a couple of things;

Where did you learn that song. No idea. No, it’s really like these things… It’s really part of the cultural heritage. I really don’t know where I know it from. It popped up in my head again. It very often happens again when I’m singing to her and then I look at the internet at the lyrics, and that’s how I saw how dark the lyrics of that song are.

very moron.

The relation with your daughter is so important in that memory. Did you mother or father sing to you as you do to your daughter?

Eum, I am not sure.

I don’t think so that much. Music was a bit part of our family life, yes, and it wasn’t excluded these things, but euh, as a kind of affinity for music and euh it’s stronger with me than for them. Also for example, when she was a bit younger, in the first year, i had kind of a real reason to apply with my skills of overtone singing? I had never that before, beause it was the key for her to put her to sleep I went to spheres, could really train there, and it really helped. It was my best audience, there was a reason to. It was amazing, that’s kind of great to use it when you have another body..

She sings the songs herself now? yeah, a little bit. The song she knows the best is alimienti xxx sings it. ✎01:18:32,43201:18:52,192

the dogs on the see… it’s proban0

1:18:39,607 —> the other one is frère jacques ✎01:18:52,19201:19:56,326

she knows quite well. She sang it the whole train. Le coq est mort. I love that.

It’s not really sure if she refers to cop or a crocodile.

So, euhm, but the swiss songs they are also quite.. they are kind of, it will come in the next months. From the toning it’ just a bit…

there’s one that she knows about a goat. ✎01:19:56,326

It’s a funny one. yodeling. and so one.

Thanks Nikolas. You are welcome.

VOORSTEL LOCATIES

Bij kopieerapparaat; bij het raam; of in eenzelfde ruimte met iedereen. Is nog onbeslist.

SELECTIE PASSAGES:

Not paying much attention to the cultural heritage until the birth of my daughter.

Mentioning residence in Brussels on copy and belonging. To tell it shorter en er nog een juiste plaats voor vinden in het verhaal: just mentioning it was on copy, originality, and that he presented an action with a photo copy machine. But also sang a swiss song. At that time I realized that there is a cultural unconscious:

Band met daughter: I speak in Swiss german to her, it includes a lot of songs.

Something on the songs having a nature sound. This epxlanation, about natural sounds versus chromatic scales.

Yodeling is itself is a tricky thing: between kitsch, commercialized for japanese tourists. (verschil met Dietwin; die moet zeker iets over de Japanners in Thailand iets zeggen). Mostly it is crappy yodeling.

Het verschil daarmee en de Zauerli: sliding scales. Alpensege. Vertellen dat hij het hoorde toen hij aan het hiken was. “I experienced it once or twice when I went walking and slept in the mountains and heard in the evening the farmer stand upon the hill, standing on a rock and starting to pray for his cows. He calls them back, but it’s a kind of praying. He’s calling Maria, Mother of God.” “They are free singing, improvising, a very long sound goes through the valley, touching the other mountain, coming back. Really amazing to hear that.”

Opgegroeid in Sankt-Gallen. There are no big cities or big rural areas, although they like to keep up the image. (comparison to Belgium, ugly, but nature in the mountains). I really miss the mountains, or I can miss landscapes. Geographically I know of course the landscape of my childhood the best. Opsomming van valleys, mountains, etc.

relatie tot jodelen in het bijzonder: “It’s not that I feel, in connection to these songs, that they belong to me or that I am directly connected to them. I realize that they are more like a desire. They are much more something a desire for the roots. I am not sure.. it’s rather something that I am hearing somehow far in the back of my consciousness.” background sounds of a being: poëtisch, heb ik dat goed begrepen?

The english accent already some melody (see remark of Adva)

Emigration? === Nostalgia?

No, it comes more from having a child, deciding to speak swiss german to her

be embarassed to sing yodeling, needs the right context for it, afraid to fall into kitsch; like going to an indian show in US

the assumption that there’s something authentic. It’s hard to resist to be proud of that.

hard to resist it from left position. the problem of swiss nationalism

the shakespear guy? with rebuilding the globe in toggenburg

OUTLINE

Hello Nikolas,

I sent you here some outline notes. You will see that sometimes I am copy-pasting passages from my transcript, but this is not for you to learn by heart. Not at all, more as a reminder of a way of speaking, that is conversational, loose, thinking aloud. Those words that are underlined, however, I feel are important to weave into your portrait.

I am curious to see how it can work, because there are some membranes of fiction. For example, you are drawing cues from the interview encounter we had; using that sensation, experience and memory as a way to guide your narration now that it is re’done’ in solo-form. Perhaps it’s a palimpsest where something of our encounter is transposed to another meeting. Yet, other memories will be triggered too.

The test visit will allow you to have some more experience with speaking in a more intimate tone, typical of conversation, (so less the voice that projects like in a public delivery, or presentation) and it would be nice if we can keep some of that tonality, even when the situation changes to speaking for 30 people in Campo. I also thought a lot about your comment if you could relate to the other portraits before and after you, but over the week it became clear to me that the more you are independent, a real portrait, planted inside the situation like a ready-made the better.

Very curious to hear you tomorrow, Myriam

OUTLINE NOTES More as a guide than as a strict chronology. Some elements can move to other places. Your choice too what songs you demonstrate.

Introduction

We decided that quickly you would start by introducing yourself, that you are Swiss although you hardly relate to Switzerland - well, so you thought… A lot of self-definitions can cumulate here.

Ex: You are: petit Bourgeois, Bildungsbürger, in a little urban sense. You loved: “The music was Swiss punk rock. That was my idea of what was part of me. ” You have immigrated a while ago. “I am removed from all that quite strongly, I am not a Swiss person anymore, I don’t relate so strongly to Switzerland” And yet:” there are these glances where I feel I have a connection to a certain culture and landscapes related to this culture.” Keywords: cultural heritage in a unconscious that is not psychological ⇒ So if you ask me about yodeling, it comes through this…

The daughter:

“Especially.. with my daughter I decided to speak Swiss German (a language that doesn’t make sense, because few people speak it. Mothertongue) - that includes a lot of songs. This is something.. and she loves songs, and we sing a lot songs together.

Having a child: images come up from my childhood, probably stored somewhere, or perhaps made up memories. Triggers through sound

Most of the songs that I am talking about that I sing for her.. it’s hard… it’s sometimes going into yodeling, but most of the things are rather, have a nature sound, a Natur Ton. I am not sure if this is the right translation. Explanation about the nature sound, overtones. “The songs I am referring to, do not always include yodeling, and sometimes you can apply a yodel in it, but you don’t have to.”

Reservations about yodeling: the problem of right wing ideology and commercialization “Yodeling is a tricky thing for me. It’s often referred to as kitsch. Swiss national songs or often used in a conservative, traditional way, and in a very commercialized way. There yodeling, you will probably hear the most yodels in this commercialized sense, and most of the times it is also crappy yodeling. One could think of speaking here about the Japanese who imitate the Swiss and the Swiss imitating the Japanese..

“Yodeling is ‘that thing for the Japanese’. And all the rest is other worlds. So if you go to Switzerland ask them not for yodeling but Zaüerli.

Explanation of Zauërli: what is it?

“They don’t work with the glottis if I am right, but also with the head and chest singing, in a very spheric way; You really have to hear that, to experience that. Mentions the Alpenseegen

“Like the Alpenseege. I experienced it once or twice when I went walking and slept in the mountains and heard in the evening the farmer stand upon the hill, standing on a rock and starting to pray for his cows. He calls them back, but it’s a kind of praying. He’s calling Maria, Mother of God. I cannot remember the song, but things like ‘keep my cows alive and healthy. Give me food’. They are free singing, improvising, a very long sound goes through the valley, touching the other mountain, coming back. Really amazing to hear that.

Own connection with landscape: I am missing the mountains. I am longing for a hike, a longer hike. I am not sure it’s because I am Swiss. Yes, I had those experiences, and I miss also other landscapes and countries where I had those experiences. But obviously I had in my childhood strong experiences, and I knew it geographically quite well. I know the names of the mountains, the valley, where they connect, the passages, the rivers.

So can I yodel? Embarassment to perform representation, cliché (like when going to USA and go to Indian Dance). But also proudness. Like for example: Silvesterchlausen. Explanation of Silvesterchlausen. It’s fucking bizar, it’s fucking fantastic. Something honest. It’s hard to resist to be proud of it.

But this proudness is different than chauvinism? Perhaps a second time returning to conservatism and commercialization? Commercialization: there is for me the dirt, that’s the enemy. more than nazi appropriation.

The image of the window!! I don’t yodel but I have a window to it. The commercialization is a negative window the positive windows are: 1)Paul Gieger 2) Alpenseegen demonstration of Alpensegen; changing proximity and distance

Back to the daughter (link with the metaphor of the window) Having a kid: “Suddenly there you are much more confronted with these windows, and also it’s a possibility to act them out. To sing the swiss children songs, and not to sing them as a stupid thing, but as something honest.” She’s my best audience

daughter will be an own mix of cultural influences, new breed, new mix does she sing already some of these songs herself? Perhaps not the real folk songs: but Allie Minnie Entlie, frère jacques and the song about the goat - has some yodeling in it if you like!!! (demonstration)

FIN

Remainders: - connection of Silvesterchlausen with the artist from Sankt-Gallen (crash, explosion) - you were also suggesting to use the commercial with the swiss people that want to keep their secrets: doubleness in attitude also characterizes your own mix of resistance and pride. For you to integrate somewhere in the narrative.