Interview: Jodie Langel on Her Viral 'Raise Your Ya Ya Ya' TikTok Trend

Jodie Langel's trusty vocal technique took on a life of its own last year when the "Raise Your Ya Ya Ya" trend took over musical theatre TikTok and beyond. The Broadway alum and theatrical educator has amassed 3 million TikTok followers after the video went viral on the popular social media platform. The trend began when Langel was filmed teaching a student how to get rid of voice cracks, but soon developed into something much bigger.

BroadwayWorld sat down with Langel to discuss how the trend took off, her stacked resume before she was a viral TikTok star, and what she plans on doing next.

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Going back to the original video, where were you? What was happening in that original moment before this all went viral?

So I was at the Texas Thespian Conference on November 24, 2024. I was teaching a girl named Athena "I'd Rather Be Me" from Mean Girls. So kind of like I always do, I hear the students sing and there's like hundreds of students in my workshop. What I do is something called Assess, Reassess. I hear the students sing and then I always say there's a transformation within 90 seconds. I assess the student and I reassess and, within seconds, I figure out their problem and what vocal exercise that I'm gonna use to fix the problem.

So, she was cracking on a certain note, you know the part of the song that's "Raise your right finger," so she was cracking because she was gripping with her mouth. So when you do that with your mouth, you're in a kind of fight-or-flight mode. Of course, you're around a whole bunch of other kids, so you're nervous. Your body goes into this hyper tense moment.

So what I wanted her to do was just open her mouth into an open, pure vowel where your mouth just opens, and it opens into your pure vowel, which helps the singing. So that's, in a quick explanation, what happened. I always tell kids to open to your pure vowels.

If you look back at all my TikToks, there's a lot of "Ah." Open to an "Ah" that will help your voice. So this one just happened to take on its own life.

So this is an exercise that you've been teaching for a long time, right?

Yes. I've been putting out free vocal lessons on TikTok for years now, like a matter of years. I've had a lot of viral videos. This one just happened to surpass all the other ones.

I feel like this one has definitely also made its way into like mainstream culture.

This one has gone on in its own sort of trend where it's been remixed and shared from everybody from basketball players to its own viral phenomenon of people taking the trend and making their own funny memes to uplifting people in its own way of "Don't be sad, raise your Ya Ya Ya" or "I was in a bad mood, but then they raised my Ya Ya Ya." It's really taken its own form which makes me very happy.

What is it like seeing all this recognition and seeing something that you've been teaching for so long and so passionately take on this incredible life?

Well how can I not be so touched and feel partially responsible for this whole movement that the trend has taken on. I love that because it's based in music, which is my upbringing and my love. So music has taken the world by storm and making this trend happen. So that touches me. So many people have reached out. I wish I could respond to all of the DMs and messages that I've received.

People that I have talked to in like 25 years, that I went to high school with back in Ossining, New York are like, "My students are doing this trend and raising their Ya Ya Ya and feel better about themselves." I had a friend who works with troubled teens who have been addicted to substance abuse and they were doing a play about their experiences and they were nervous, but the other kids were screaming, "Raise your Ya Ya Ya and it'll be okay!"

How can I not feel great about what this trend has done to people's spirits and confidence and uplifting. Babies are doing it and sports teams and my daughter's volleyball team. They're like, "We're gonna raise our Ya Ya Ya today! We feel great!"

I can't tell you how great I feel about how this has taken its own shape and that it has lasted this long. How is that possible?

I mean, sometimes when these things make their way into culture, it's like a quick couple days, at most. This has a full life. It is still going.

I was in Blue Ridge Mountains with my husband and we were sitting there having dinner and the waitress came up. She was like, "Are you the...?" I went, "Yeah." That was on Christmas and now it's over a month later.

People are comparing me to all sorts of flash in the pan people. I am very aware that I've been called the Hawk Tuah girl and I've been very aware that I've been called a lot of people, but I was somebody before this.

I would love to hear more about your background before this and your training and what you've been doing leading up to this.

I was on Broadway at age 22. I played Cosette [in Les Miserables] and then I returned to the Broadway company and I played Eponine. Then I was Grizabella in Cats at age 26, so I was very young when I played Grizabella in Cats. I had a whole Broadway history before this. I was the narrator in Joseph and Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on tour, hand-picked by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

I knew the Tara Rubin office very well in my Broadway career. Then I went to grad school, I went to UCLA and I got my masters in acting because teaching was always very much what I wanted to do. I spent two-and-a-half years in New York doing I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, the off-Broadway show. I've done over 20 different regional shows. I did the gamut, but I've had so many different vocal teachers along the way. I studied classically. I did a show at Carnegie Hall.

I've like done so many different vocal techniques along the way and many bad ones. I had a vocal nodule at one point. I went on in Cats when both of my understudies were sick and I sang "Memory" in my head voice. Like, I've been through it. I know what it takes.

How did you overcome that?

I know about vowels and vocal technique and how to sing in a mix and how to sing in a belt and how to sing in your head voice because I've done it and I've done it for over 25 years as a vocalist. People are so interested in how to maintain your voice and how to sing in a mix and how to sing in a belt.

There's so many hard songs in the musical theater canon now, these "My Days" and these pop songs, and Mean Girls. So obsessed with how to sing these really difficult songs and how to navigate your way through that and I teach exactly that. How to do this, how to navigate that, within 90 seconds. That's why people watch me ... because I show you how to do it. It's not like, "Okay, this is 'My Days.'" I teach you exactly how to do it because people fail and then learn with like the assess and the reassess.

Other than the Ya Ya Ya, is there another technique that you have that you want people to get into?

I do a lot of straw phonation, which is called SOVTE, straw phonation. That all goes into my philosophy of healthy technique, how do we do this healthily.

A lot of people talk about how I walk people around the room. Well, it just gets you out of your head. And it goes all around that flight or flight mentality of like, "What do we do when we're out there and we're super nervous?" We don't have time to think. So walking people around the room just gets them out of their head. And just calling things out.

And then doing it in a different group of people. Everybody loves that sort of camaraderie and that cheer mentality. We're all here for each other kind of thing. And again, that Raise Your Ya Ya Ya, that cheering for each other. We don't do that enough. I don't think collectively we do that enough. 

Moving forward, what do you hope is the future of your conferences, of your TikTok page? What do you want to see more of in the future now?

I am looking to start a podcast. I want to do that. I did write a book about Broadway. which was many years ago. It's called Making It On Broadway, and I interviewed over 150 different Broadway actors. Everybody from like, Idina Menzel to Ann Miller before she died, and Jason Alexander wrote the forward of the book. So that was many years ago, and I kind of want to return to some of the questions that I asked in the book. People talked about winning a Tony Award, and then three months later, working as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle at a kids Bar Mitvah party because you have to pay the bills. That's some of the realities that we still live with.

But talking about the ins and outs of being a Broadway performer. Like, "What's your day like? Can you talk? What's it like keeping up that stamina? Tell me a funny moment on stage. Tell me about something not going perfectly. Tell me about the fears you have, the anxieties you have about being a Broadway performer." Just sort of getting into the juicy stuff and then some vocal stuff. I feel like it's gonna be fun. My first guests are probably gonna be some very famous Broadway peeps.

Since the musical theatre catalog is always evolving, you're returning to some of the questions you had asked before and things are so different now, but then like some things still resonate.

I mean, some of these songs are so hard. Samantha Pauly is a really good friend of mine and "New Money" song, that's crazy. That's a vocal marathon. All these "My Days" and all this stuff is just really difficult, really, really hard. I was like, "I wouldn't want to sing this." I could teach it, but I wouldn't want to sing it. You guys sing it, I'll teach it, I'll coach it once, and then you guys go off and do it. I don't want to have to sing that. [Laughs] So, I definitely want to do that.

I want to do a college tour. I'm planning on doing the tour of colleges because a lot of the colleges are reaching out to me asking me to teach so I just want to teach all over. My passion is teaching so I still want to continue to do that and just spread the Ya Ya Ya.