AllMovie

Stefan Schwietert's documentary Echoes of Home paints a loving, unbridled homage to a vocal art quasi-extinct in North America but still prevalent in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria: yodeling. Schwietert profiles three masters of the craft, diverse in age, lifestyle, and background, and thus poses several key questions about the common threads connecting all of these individuals. In so doing, the filmmaker inducts the audience into a world where conceptions of the voice and its raw power extend far, far beyond the platonic ideas of singing and talking. This most unusual art form, Schwietert reminds us constantly, is abetted by the raw natural power of the ampitheater that consists of mountain cliffs and seemingly endless Alpine landscapes.