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‘You can yodel and don’t have to be conservative’: the Swiss feminist choir rewriting traditional songs

Echo vom Eierstock is opening up the overwhelmingly male Alpine folk music scene with new versions of lyrics about nagging wives and naive girls

There were also the words to the songs, portraying an idyllic Alpine life surrounded by pristine nature and overseen by a benevolent God, the men in charge and the women presented either as naive girls, self-sacrificing mothers or nagging wives. Carmen Bach, who moved to Switzerland from Germany in 2010, had long been interested in taking up yodelling, but as a woman and a German she felt out of place in the traditional scene. The choir brings together a diverse group of women, ranging in age from mid-20s to others well into their 70s, with some driving from Zürich or Berne for weekly rehearsals in the small town of Stans.

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