In Search of the Lonesome Yodel

It looks weird on paper, but it works in reality: it's two yodeling lesbians from New Zealand who grew up in the country, who've taken the world by storm. The way it works is we have a very clear sense who we are.

– Jools Topp describes the Topp Twins

I think the idea of being brought up in the country was that you really really really developed a sense of yourself. No one pushed you round, and you were proud of who you were — and that was a real sort of country thing.

– Jools Topp

She says her years of yodeling gave a low depth to her voice that confused some conductors, who thought she was a mezzo-soprano, but she is most comfortable at the top.

– Stuff writer Denise Irvine, on opera singer Malvina Major's background in yodeling, 30 March 2012

...I was the grand sort of opera singer, and I was standing on the stage in the Founders Theatre singing these operatic numbers and somebody yelled out "Oh come on Malvina, now give us a yodel!". It brought me right down to earth...

– Malvina Major

The first time I heard a yodel was Shirley Thoms, and it felt like a baby angel was singing to me. I just went into a trance. It was like I was oblivious to everything and anything else in my life, you know for probably about a week after I'd heard Shirley sing. And I just said to myself right then and then when I first heard that yodel, "I'm gonna do that — one day I'm gonna sing like Shirley Thoms".

– Lynda Topp on Australian singer Shirley Thoms, early in this documentary

...she would break into a yodel. The normal notes were alright but when she got to the quick high pitch, I tell you, my ears were ringing. And one day I actually said to her "Lynda, would you go down to the back of the farm please".

– Lynda's mother Jean Topp, early in this documentary

...we have made yodeling funny. Everyone else is too deadly serious: go to a country music club, they're deadly serious about their yodeling . . . in order to send something up, you have to be really good at it...

– Jools Topp, 20 minutes into the Topp Twins' interview for TV series Funny As