This little tale concerning the perils of cultural appropriation can be found in my collection Sleepytime Cemetery, available from Black Scat Books. Here’s how it starts; for more, buy the book!

THE YODELING DUTCHMAN

Rembrandt van Rijn stepped out of his picturesque cottage and into the crisp October air. I should make it clear at the outset that this Rembrandt van Rijn is not the same as the famous painter, whose works are prized by museums and fetch such high prices at auction. He wasn’t even a painter. To clear up any confusion, I should give him a different name.

Johannes Vermeer stepped out of his picturesque cottage and into the crisp October air. He filled his lungs and started yodeling.

“Oh layee layee oh,” he yodeled, waving his arms in rhythm.

A stout woman bustled out, her poplar klompen clattering on the walkway. She was Catharina, his wife.

“Johannes! Johannes!” she exclaimed. “Stop that infernal racket!”

“I’m yodeling,” he explained.

“I can hear that,” she replied. “But this is Holland, not Switzerland.”

“But we Dutch have no folk tradition of extended vocal technique, like Swiss yodeling, Tuvan throat singing, or Balkan outdoor singing.”

“True,” admitted Catharina.

“Many Dutch jazz bands play music from the African American tradition,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I appropriate the glottal stops of our Alpine neighbors?”

“Because they’re Alpine,” Catharina said. “When they yodel, it echoes. There’s no echo here. The Netherlands are as flat as a pancake, or, to put it in our native tongue, a pannekoek.” (This was before the spelling reform of 1996, which changed the spelling to pannenkoek.)