A well-deserved break during the Federal Cowbell Ringers’ Festival on August 23 in Schüpfen.
Peter Schneider / Keystone
The Brügger family has been forging bells and cowbells for three generations. But since the Covid pandemic, the objects closely associated with the Swiss rural imagination have also become instruments of protest. This is a problematic appropriation, according to an ethnologist.
You sense the Brügger foundry before you see it: first in your ears, then in your nose. As soon as you get off the bus in Villars-sur-Glâne, a village on the outskirts of Fribourg, you hear the sound of a hammer striking sheet metal. Then, as you step through the door, you’re hit by a smell of smoke, coal and red-hot metal. Alexis Brügger is there to shake your hand. A 26-year-old with powerful arms and a ready laugh. Following the death of his father in 2019, and his grandfather a few months later, he took over the workshop that has been making bells and cowbells for three generations.
“There’s no apprenticeship for this trade,” emphasises Alexis, who immediately addresses us informally. “You learn this craft by forging.” And so, at the age of 22, he gave up his job as a tiler to carry on – initially with his brother Arnaud – the family tradition started some 50 years earlier by his grandfather Marius.
“I had no experience whatsoever,” he says. “My older brother, on the other hand, had worked for about five years with our dad. But he hadn’t learnt how to cast bells. I spent quite a few weekends practising and it took me six months before I managed to make one. A few even flew through the air it was so infuriating,” he laughs.
Alexis Brügger at work in the foundry at Villars-sur-Glâne. Amidst anvils, moulds and walls blackened by soot, this is where the large cowbells take shape.
Luca Beti
The Brügger family’s smithy, where time seems to have stood still. Forges, anvils and tools bear the marks of decades of work.
Luca Beti
Wood and coal are used to fire the forge. The sheet of steel is heated to around 700 degrees Celsius before being shaped by hammer blows.
Luca Beti
The concave moulds used to shape the two halves of the cowbells. The process involves numerous stages and thousands of hammer blows.
Luca Beti
His brother Arnaud at the family foundry. Together with Alexis, he initially helped to keep the business going following their father’s death in 2019.
Luca Beti
The office also serves as a small tribute to the Brügger family: on the walls hang bells made for celebrations, anniversaries and special occasions. Among these, one was created by grandfather Marius in memory of Henri Chammartin, the Swiss rider who won the individual gold medal in dressage at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.
Luca Beti
Cowbells of various sizes after sandblasting. Before leaving the foundry, they are finished and also tested for their sound: each piece, made by hand, has its own unique tone.
Luca Beti
For a long time, everything he made ended up in the bin, especially the cowbells. But he was able to remelt the bells and reuse the bronze. “It was a long process that required a great deal of patience,” he recalls. “And it did me good because patience isn’t exactly my strong point. This craft has forced me to work on myself as well.”
Today, Alexis knows his trade inside out and has become an expert craftsman. Yet, standing at the forge, he continues to experiment in his constant quest for excellence. “I haven’t finished learning yet,” he says. “There are no shortcuts to perfection: it takes years of experience.”
Four thousand hammer blows
The foundry also tells another story. That of hard, gruelling work that leaves beads of sweat on Alexis’s brow. It takes around 4,000 hammer blows to shape a single cowbell. After being heated in the forge to around 700°C, the sheet of steel is removed with tongs and hammered onto the concave anvil. When it can no longer be shaped, the sheet is returned to the fire. This process is repeated about ten times.
Forging is just one of the many stages in the process. The metal must be brazed, imperfections smoothed out, the two halves welded together, the supports for the clapper and the leather collar fitted, sandblasted, coloured and many other tasks that we won’t list here.
“It takes me about a day to make a cowbell,” says Alexis. “No two are alike because each piece is made entirely by hand.” This is the Paul Morier brand from Morges, a prestigious name taken over by his grandfather Marius. It is a name associated with quality and authenticity, appreciated by herders’ associations, organisers of major folk festivals and players of large cowbells.
>>> A visit to the Brügger foundry:
Political connotation
Once it leaves the foundry, the cowbell can take on different meanings. Its sound can evoke bucolic landscapes, grazing cows and Alpine traditions. In recent years, however, it has taken on a different connotation.
During the pandemic, as part of demonstrations against health measures, the marches of the Freiheitstrychler (freedom bell-ringers – Trychel means cowbell in Swiss German) transformed that chime into a voice of protest, giving a political dimension to an object linked to the rural world.
“The cowbell is neither conservative nor progressive,” emphasises Konrad Kuhn. The expert in popular culture and ethnologist is a lecturer at the University of Basel and an associate professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Kuhn points out that it is, above all, the context that determines its meaning.
“There’s a marked difference between ringing a cowbell to cheer on the national football team and ringing it during a protest march,” he says. Or whether its toll accompanies a local custom, such as the one practised in the Haslital, in the Bernese Oberland, where cowbell ringers drive away evil spirits between Christmas and New Year, or at the Chalandamarz, the custom of bidding farewell to winter in the Engadine, in canton Graubünden. “In these cases, the processions never have a political connotation,” he says.
Christoph Blocher, billionaire leader of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party and a government minister between 2004 and 2007, during the campaign against Switzerland’s accession to the European Economic Area in November 1992.
Keystone
Kuhn points out that although agriculture has lost some of its economic importance, many of its artefacts continue to hold strong symbolic value.
“In Switzerland, the Swiss People’s Party is seeking to strengthen its ties with the agricultural sector by exploiting its symbols for political ends,” he says, pointing out that, unlike a trade mark, a tradition is not protected.
“In the early 1990s, during the campaign against Switzerland’s accession to the European Economic Area, Christoph Blocher marched at the head of groups of people ringing large cowbells,” Kuhn says. “It would be interesting to see a procession of Trychler marching at a Green Party conference. That would prove that the sound does not convey any political message.”
Traditions belong to everyone
“Traditions evolve,” Kuhn emphasises. “The sound of a cowbell has remained the same over the centuries, but what has changed is the meaning we associate with that ringing. The important thing is not to reduce these symbols to a purely political interpretation.”
According to the ethnologist, this is precisely what happened during the pandemic, when a cultural practice was used to support a very specific stance.
A group of ‘Freiheitstrychler’ at an unauthorised demonstration in February 2022 in St Gallen.
Keystone
Kuhn regards this appropriation as problematic because it draws a line between those who share that message and those who simply wish to perpetuate a custom.
“Cultural practices belong to everyone and should remain open and inclusive,” Kuhn says. “When they become tools for division, the problem is not merely political. If associated with a protest movement, a tradition risks losing its appeal and, over time, becoming weakened.”
Swiss wrestling, or Schwingen, which enjoys great popularity in German-speaking Switzerland, has taken the opposite approach. “In the past, this sport was reserved almost exclusively for those with Swiss roots going back generations,” Kuhn says. “In recent years, it has opened up to other athletes with a migrant background, making it more appealing.”
It is a process that Kuhn hopes will be replicated in the world of cowbell ringers, thereby freeing them from the label that certain groups have pinned on them.
Politics aside, cowbells remain popular
For the time being, cowbells continue to enjoy great popularity. At the Brügger foundry in Villars-sur-Glâne there is no shortage of work. Alexis is happy about this, despite the heat, the dust, the noise and the long days spent in the workshop.
“I knew from childhood that I would do this job,” says the young man with hands blackened by coal dust. “I don’t want to talk about a calling, but certainly about a great passion passed on to me by my dad.”
It was, however, his father who advised him to learn another trade – that of a tiler. “There are no certainties, and life can play nasty tricks,” he says. Words that, following his father’s sudden death, have taken on a special meaning for him.
As he speaks, Alexis watches out of the corner of his eye the sheet metal he’s left in the forge. When it reaches the right colour, he grips it with tongs, places it on the concave anvil and starts hammering again. He was taught that the more blows the sheet metal receives, the better the sound of the cowbell. Whether this is really the case or merely part of the trade’s folklore, even he doesn’t know for certain. But he carries on doing it. One blow after another. And the hammering follows us even as we leave the foundry.
Edited by Daniele Mariani. Translated from Italian, sub-edited by Thomas Stephens
