Thousands of voices unite in song at traditional choir festival celebrating Estonia's culture
The Song Festival Grounds, a massive outdoor venue in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, was packed on Saturday evening despite the downpour. The traditional Song and Dance Celebration, that decades ago inspired resistance to Soviet control and was later recognized by the U.N.'s cultural agency, attracted tens of thousands of performers and spectators alike, many in national costume.
The four-day choir-singing and dancing event centers around Estonian folk songs and patriotic anthems and is held roughly every five years. The tradition dates back to the 19th century. In the late 1980s, it inspired the defiant Singing Revolution, helping Estonia and other Baltic nations break free from the Soviet occupation.
To this day, it remains a major point of national pride for a country of about 1.3 million.
This year, tickets to the main event -– a seven-hour concert on Sunday featuring choirs of all ages -– sold out weeks in advance.
Rasmus Puur, a conductor at the song festival and assistant to the artistic director, ascribes the spike in popularity to Estonians longing for a sense of unity in the wake of the global turmoil, especially Russia's war in Ukraine.
'We want to feel as one today more than six years ago (when the celebration was last held), and we want to feel that we are part of Estonia,' Puur told The Associated Press on Friday.
Soviet occupation
The tradition to hold massive first song-only, then song and dance festivals dates back to the time when Estonia was part of the Russian Empire.
The first song celebration was held in 1869 in the southern city of Tartu. It heralded a period of national awakening for Estonians, when Estonian-language press, theater and other things emerged, says Elo-Hanna Seljamaa, associate professor at the University of Tartu.
The festivals continued throughout a period of Estonia's independence between the two world wars and then during the nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation.
The Soviet rulers were into 'mass spectacles of all kinds, so in a way it was very logical for the Soviet regime to tap into this tradition and to try to co-opt it,' Seljamaa said in an interview.
Estonians had to sing Soviet propaganda songs in Russian during that time, but they were also able to sing their own songs in their own language, which was both an act of defiance and an act of therapy for them, she said.
At the same time, the complicated logistics of putting together a mass event like that taught Estonians to organize, Seljamaa said, so when the political climate changed in the 1980s, the protest against the Soviet rule naturally came in the form of coming together and singing.
The unity extended beyond Estonia's borders. During the Singing Revolution, 2 million people in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined hands to form a 600-kilometer (370-mile) human chain that protested Soviet occupation of the Baltics with a song.
In 2003, the United Nations' cultural body, UNESCO, recognized Estonia's folk song festival and similar events in Latvia and Lithuania for showcasing the 'intangible cultural heritage of humanity.'
'We sang ourselves free'
Marina Nurming recalls attending the Singing Revolution gatherings in the 1980s as a teenager. This year she travelled to Tallinn from Luxembourg, where she currently lives, to take part in the Song and Dance Celebration as a choir singer –- her longtime hobby.
The Singing Revolution is a time 'when we sang ourselves free,' she told AP.
Seljamaa says the song and dance celebration may have suffered a drop in popularity in the 1990s, a somewhat difficult time for Estonia as it was emerging as an independent country after the Soviet Union collapsed, but has since bounced back.
There is a tremendous interest in it among young people, she says, and always more performers willing to take part than the venue can fit in, and there are people who had left Estonia to live abroad, but travel back to take part.
Nurming is one example. She is part of the European Choir of Estonians – a singing group that unites Estonians from more than a dozen countries.
Many opportunities to sing
This year's four-day celebration, which started on Thursday, included several stadium dancing performances by over 10,000 dancers from all around the country and a folk music instrument concert.
It culminates over the weekend with the song festival featuring some 32,000 choir singers, preceded by a large procession, in which all participants -– singers, dancers, musicians, clad in traditional costumes and waving Estonian flags –- march from the city center to the Song Festival Grounds by the Baltic Sea.
Those taking part come from all corners of Estonia, and there are collectives from abroad, as well. It's a mix of men, women and children, with participants aged from six to 93.
For most, singing and dancing is a hobby on top of their day jobs or studies. But to take part in the celebration, collectives had to go through a rigorous selection process, and months worth of rehearsals.
For Karl Kesküla, an electrical engineer from Estonia's western island of Saaremaa, this is the first time taking part in the song celebration as a singer -– but he attended it before as a spectator.
'I got the feeling that what they did was really special and almost, like, every person you meet has gone to it or been a part of it at least once. So I just wanted that feeling too,' Kesküla, 30, told the AP at the procession on Saturday.
High emotional point
The theme of the song festival this year is dialects and regional languages, and the repertoire is a mix of folk songs, well-known patriotic anthems that are traditionally sung at these celebrations and new pieces written specifically for the occasion.
The festival's artistic director, Heli Jürgenson, says that although the audience won't know all the songs -– especially those sung in dialects -– there will be many opportunities to sing along.
The main concert on Sunday will end with a song called 'My Fatherland is My Love' –- a patriotic song Estonians spontaneously sang at the 1960 festival in protest against the Soviet regime. Every song celebration since 1965 has concluded with this anthem in what both performers and spectators describe as the highest emotional point of the whole event.
An emotional Jürgenson, who this year will conduct a combined choir of about 19,000 people singing it, said: 'This is a very special moment.'
She believes that what drove the tradition more than 150 years ago still drives it today.
'There have been different turning points, there have been a lot of historical twists, but the need for singing, songs and people have remained the same,' she said. 'There are certain songs that we always sing, that we want to sing. This is what keeps this tradition going for over 150 years.'
'We forget our troubles'
Participants described the celebrations as being an important part of their national identity.
'Estonians are always getting through the hard times through songs, through songs and dances. If it's hard, we sing together and that brings everything back together and then we forget our troubles,' singer Piret Jakobson said.
'It's really good with all Estonian people to do the same thing,' said engineer Taavi Pentma, who took part in the dance performances. 'So we are, like, breathing in one and the heart is beating (as one).'
Some 100 members of the European Choir of Estonians came to the Song Celebration this year from various corners of Europe. Among them is Kaja Kriis, who traveled from Germany, where she's been living for the last 25 years.
'Estonia is my home,' she said, adding that it's important for her 'to be together with my friends, to keep my Estonian language, to maintain the Estonian language and Estonian culture.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
05-08-2025
- New York Times
The Record Label That Reset My Expectations for Classical Music
The signal kept cutting out on Manfred Eicher's car radio that night. Eicher, the founder and guiding spirit of ECM Records, was driving from Stuttgart to Zurich in the early 1980s when he happened on the broadcast of a composition he'd never heard. The reception was sketchy, but what he was able to hear seized his attention: music that spoke directly and openly, with something about it that dissolved familiar notions of what was old and what was new. This music 'struck me like a meteorite from the sky,' Eicher later said. It was a Saul-on-the-road-to-Zurich moment, if you will. After more than a year, he finally identified the piece: 'Tabula Rasa,' a concerto for two violins, prepared piano and strings by an Estonian composer named Arvo Pärt. Today, Pärt's signature style, called tintinnabuli, is synonymous with 'holy minimalism.' It has proved, by classical music standards, enormously popular. But when Eicher happened upon that broadcast, Pärt was virtually unknown outside the Soviet Union. Eicher was determined to release a recording of 'Tabula Rasa.' But ECM, founded in 1969, was a jazz label — or, at least, one dedicated principally to improvised music. So he decided to create a new label, which he called ECM New Series. Pärt's piece became the title work of its first release, in 1984. It included two versions of the enigmatic 'Fratres' and a memorial for Benjamin Britten. It remains the single best introduction to Pärt's musical universe. The label's 40th anniversary was recently celebrated with the publication of 'ECM New Series: A Compendium,' a sleekly elegant book detailing its complete catalog of more than 450 releases. Both the anniversary and the book offer an occasion to assess the label's four-decade body of work. But that turns out to be no easy task. ECM New Series has inarguably carved out a distinct place in the classical music ecosystem, and its austere visual aesthetic and spacious, pristine sound are recognizable calling cards. Beyond that, though, finding the guiding thread of the label, its distinct essence, becomes remarkably difficult. Pärt became a mainstay; his 18th album with it will be released on Sept. 5. But Eicher's decisions also thwarted expectations. Less than a year after 'Tabula Rasa' came out, in fact, the label released an album of the actor Bruno Ganz reciting poetry by the German Romantic Friedrich Hölderlin. There would follow, before the end of the 1980s, experimental works by the American composer and vocalist Meredith Monk; the Hilliard Ensemble singing Thomas Tallis's 'Lamentations of Jeremiah'; a sonic exploration of the medieval Chartres Cathedral in France by the violinist Paul Giger; and the pianist Keith Jarrett, perhaps the most acclaimed artist on ECM's main label, playing Bach on the harpsichord. Since the beginning of the 21st century, ECM New Series has increasingly explored the main currents of the classical repertoire. Andras Schiff has recorded the complete Beethoven piano sonatas in impeccably lucid performances; the Danish String Quartet, which has a claim on being the best group of its kind in the world, has intermixed Bach, early 20th-century repertoire and Beethoven's late quartets, to thrilling effect; and the pianist Robert Levin recorded all of Mozart's sonatas on the composer's own fortepiano. Of course, there is nothing unusual about a label exploring a wide range of music. But ECM New Series has never fit the mold of a major label, with a goal of synoptically covering every corner of the repertoire. In fact, its lacunae are as notable as its inclusions. Eicher has recorded hours and hours of Bach, including no fewer than four recordings of the first book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and three versions each of the composer's solo cello suites and sonatas and partitas for violin. But the New Series has never released a Beethoven or Brahms symphony. There are two pieces by Tchaikovsky and one Mahler movement, but 12 releases with music by Gyorgy Kurtag. One of those, featuring Kurtag and his wife, Marta, playing his own works and those of Bach, is one of my favorite albums of classical music, period. Eicher is not a man given to explaining himself or his artistic direction in much detail. He was not available for an interview, but he did answer some questions by email. His responses had a reserved elegance, not unlike the label's aesthetic. Asked about his vision for ECM New Series, he wrote: 'I envisioned from the very beginning something like a journey, one with a set route, but also open to serendipity. Not necessarily following the most direct or shortest path, but allowing for productive detours.' What about the artists he chooses to work with? Eicher said only that 'everything has evolved and unfolded organically over the years,' and added, 'I believe what was crucial, was the natural growth of relationships — this weaving of performers and composers — and the time we allowed it to develop.' Perhaps that last answer contains the kernel of the label's remarkable ability to build a recognizable identity — a brand, perhaps. That lies in the long-term artistic evolution of the performers and composers that fill the 'Compendium' (listed in no particular order, which seems a very ECM way of doing it). Many of the musicians who first recorded with Eicher still do so today. Monk's collected recordings on the label fill a 13-disc set released in 2022. Other principals include Jarrett and the iconoclastic Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer, who played together on 'Tabula Rasa.' Kremer's latest, from last year, is an exploration of his Baltic heritage. From Jarrett, who suffered a pair of strokes in 2018 and has not performed publicly since, there was recently an irresistible collection of C.P.E. Bach sonatas. If I had to pick a musician who exemplifies the ECM New Series gestalt, it would be the violist Kim Kashkashian, whose introspective playing seems to hide as much as it reveals. This elusive quality runs through all two dozen or so of her recordings, especially those made with Levin, her longtime recital partner. But it shines most darkly in 'Elegies,' the duo's first offering on the label. In a series of lamenting works by composers as varied as Liszt and Elliott Carter, they create a landscape of astonishing desolation — a perfect match for the Eduard Micus painting on the cover. Eicher's genius seems to lie not only in offering his artists a space to follow their passions, but also in opening them to new creative possibilities. In one instance, that meant bringing together the tenor John Potter, the jazz saxophonist John Surman and the bassist Barry Guy in a program of Dowland songs in order, Eicher wrote, to 'lift the music beyond standard early music conventions.' After the Hilliard Ensemble had made half a dozen recordings, of medieval works by Perotin and modern ones by Pärt, Eicher had the idea of bringing them together with the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek, a pillar of the main ECM label. Garbarek improvised delicately around the ensemble's performances of medieval and Renaissance liturgical works. The result, 'Officium,' was an unlikely hit, probably the biggest success the label has ever had. Asked about the popularity of certain albums, Eicher responded that, although the ECM New Series catalog is full of releases with unexpected success, 'to think of music in economic terms is, from the outset, to miss the point.' 'It is a search for something yet unknown, a fleeting, truthful moment, if you will,' he added. 'The New Series, and ECM in total, is a cultural project, firstly, addressed to listeners who care about music.' That, I think, is Eicher's true achievement. By following stubbornly his own muse and those of a relative handful of especially creative musicians, he reset the horizon of expectations for a record label. The musicians — performers and composers alike — in the 'Compendium' seem like prototypical ECM New Series artists, even though that term is impossible to define for a label that put out a recital of the Austrian Baroque composer Johann Heinrich Schmelzer one month and the five-disc soundtrack of Jean-Luc Godard's film 'Histoire(s) du Cinéma' the next. For 'listeners who care about music,' it all fits into one imaginative whole. Not every release will appeal to the same degree, and some don't appeal at all. But chances are, you will always be curious about what comes next. As with all enterprises driven largely by a founder's vision, though, the question of ECM New Series's future is vexing. In his emailed answers, Eicher indicated that there were 'plenty of projects' both waiting for release and yet to be realized. But the inescapable fact is that, at 82, he cannot be around for what I hope will be the label's next 40 years. My final question to Eicher was about what the label's future might be, beyond his lifetime. His response was crisp and succinct, though singularly unavailing as an answer: 'Time will tell.'
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Yahoo
Famous birthdays for July 12: Cheyenne Jackson, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
July 12 (UPI) -- Those born on this date are under the sign of Cancer. They include: -- Roman leader Julius Caesar in 100 B.C. -- Pope Clement X in 1590 -- Writer Henry David Thoreau in 1817 -- Photography pioneer George Eastman in 1854 -- Scientist George Washington Carver in 1864 -- Artist Amedeo Modigliani in 1884 -- Musician Oscar Hammerstein II in 1895 -- Writer Pablo Neruda in 1904 -- Comedian Milton Berle in 1908 -- Musician Van Cliburn in 1934 -- Comedian/actor Bill Cosby in 1937 (age 88) -- Musician Christine McVie (Fleetwood Mac) in 1943 -- Actor Denise Nicholas in 1944 (age 81) -- Exercise/diet guru Richard Simmons in 1948 -- Movie producer Brian Grazer in 1951 (age 74) -- Actor Cheryl Ladd in 1951 (age 74) -- Actor Mel Harris in 1956 (age 69) -- Actor Rolonda Watts in 1959 (age 66) -- Tongan King Tupou VI in 1959 (age 66) -- Musician Dan Murphy (Soul Asylum) in 1962 (age 63) -- Musician Robin Wilson (Gin Blossoms) in 1965 (age 60) -- Dominican President Luis Abinader in 1967 (age 58) -- Actor Lee Byung-hun in 1970 (age 55) -- U.S. Olympic/World Figure Skating Hall of Fame member Kristi Yamaguchi in 1971 (age 54) -- Actor Cheyenne Jackson in 1975 (age 50) -- Filmmaker Phil Lord in 1975 (age 50) -- Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal in 1975 (age 50) -- Wrestler Brock Lesnar in 1977 (age 48) -- Actor Steve Howey in 1977 (age 48) -- Actor Michelle Rodriguez in 1978 (age 47) -- Actor Topher Grace in 1978 (age 47) -- Actor Kristen Connolly in 1980 (age 45) -- Musician Kimberly Perry (The Band Perry) in 1983 (age 42) -- Actor Natalie Martinez in 1984 (age 41) -- Actor Phoebe Tonkin in 1989 (age 36) -- Actor Rachel Brosnahan in 1990 (age 35) -- Human rights activist Malala Yousafzai in 1997 (age 28) -- NBA player/Olympian Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in 1998 (age 27)
Boston Globe
06-07-2025
- Boston Globe
Thousands of voices unite in song at traditional choir festival celebrating Estonia's culture
The four-day To this day, it remains a major point of national pride for a country of about 1.3 million. Advertisement This year, tickets to the main event — a seven-hour concert on Sunday featuring choirs of all ages — sold out weeks in advance. Rasmus Puur, a conductor at the song festival and assistant to the artistic director, ascribes the spike in popularity to Estonians longing for a sense of unity in the wake of the global turmoil, especially Russia's 'We want to feel as one today more than six years ago [when the celebration was last held], and we want to feel that we are part of Estonia,' Puur told the Associated Press on Friday. Advertisement The theme of the song festival this year is dialects and regional languages, and the repertoire is a mix of folk songs, well-known patriotic anthems that are traditionally sung at these celebrations, and new pieces written specifically for the occasion. The main concert on Sunday night culminated with a song called 'My Fatherland is My Love' — a patriotic song Estonians spontaneously sang at the 1960 festival in protest against the Soviet regime. This anthem has been the closing song of song celebrations since 1965, and many described it as the highest emotional point of the event. This year, a choir of over 19,000 singers performed it, with the spectators singing along and waving Estonian flags. The festival's artistic director, Heli Jürgenson, believes that what drove the tradition more than 150 years ago still drives it today. 'There have been different turning points, there have been a lot of historical twists, but the need for singing, songs, and people have remained the same,' she said. 'There are certain songs that we always sing, that we want to sing. This is what keeps this tradition going for over 150 years.' The tradition to hold massive first song-only, then song and dance festivals dates back to the time when Estonia was part of the Russian Empire. The first song celebration was held in 1869 in the southern city of Tartu. It heralded a period of national awakening for Estonians, when Estonian-language press, theater, and other things emerged, says Elo-Hanna Seljamaa, associate professor at the University of Tartu. The festivals continued throughout a period of Estonia's independence between the two world wars and then during the nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation. Advertisement The Soviet rulers were into 'mass spectacles of all kinds, so in a way it was very logical for the Soviet regime to tap into this tradition and to try to co-opt it,' Seljamaa said in an interview. Estonians had to sing Soviet propaganda songs in Russian during that time, but they were also able to sing their own songs in their own language, which was both an act of defiance and an act of therapy for them, she said. At the same time, the complicated logistics of putting together a mass event like that taught Estonians to organize, Seljamaa said, so when the political climate changed in the 1980s, the protest against the Soviet rule naturally came in the form of coming together and singing. In 2003, the United Nations' cultural body, This year's four-day celebration, which started on Thursday, included several stadium dancing performances by over 10,000 dancers from all around the country and a folk music instrument concert. It culminated over the weekend with the song festival featuring some 32,000 choir singers. That was preceded by a large procession, in which all participants — singers, dancers, musicians, clad in traditional costumes and waving Estonian flags — marched from the city center to the Song Festival Grounds by the Baltic Sea. For most, singing and dancing is a hobby on top of their day jobs or studies. But to take part in the celebration, collectives had to go through a rigorous selection process, and months worth of rehearsals. Advertisement Participants described the celebrations as being an important part of their national identity. 'Estonians are always getting through the hard times through songs, through songs and dances. If it's hard, we sing together and that brings everything back together and then we forget our troubles,' singer Piret Jakobson said.
