(originally at
www.evestus.ning.com on July 7, 2009)
That, without the question mark, was the name of this years song festival. When you go to a concert, where there’s three spectators in the audience per every artist on the stage, you might expect it to be a quite small and exclusive event. That, however, does not apply, when the are twenty seven thousand artists. This years Estonian Song Festival was THE biggest event this country has ever seen – it outnumbered the Michael Jackson concert on the same arena in 1997 by almost a double. All together, there were about 100 000 peole on the song festival grounds, wich calculates to approximately 7.5% of our entire population. It is also one of the most hi-tech events, and the speakers used would stack up a pile bigger than my house. Interestingly, however, the vocal, and also the tiny part of 2300 member orchestra, were not electronically amplified via those speakers. Because when 24 705 peole want to say something together, they will be heard. Oh yes. This event takes place every five years, and visiting it at least once is considered as a needed feature of a true estonian. Congratulations to me, i’m one step closer to becoming one.
But
One question that struck me, is why do people go there, if they don’t give a flying fuck what’s going on at the stage and find the burger stalls and souvenir salesmen far more interesting, and a fair amount of them don’t want to be there at all?
The festival starts with a five hour parade wich takes the participants through the city of Tallinn to the festival grounds. This might well compete for the most fun part of the festival. You can see all the exquisite folklore clothings, and the people in them, since on the grounds you need one hell of a binoculars to make out a face in the choirs. Second, there’s a lot of singing and drum playing and fun making in the parade, wich eventually led the first concert into a 1.5 hour delay. And third – it’s free to visit. Although my personal experience was somwehat damped by my recent carma of finding myself in situations where some drug OD decides to start dying in my vicinity every time i visit Tallinn. This time, luckily, there were enough other people around to deal with his sorry ass.
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| One type of parader |
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| and another type of parader |
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| and also a third type of parader |
Next comes the first concert day, wich consisted of ramming yourself through the hordes at the entrance gate and then hoping to find a place on that enormous field with enough room to sit down on. Since we were somewhat late due to the Georgian restaurant shef, who most likely waited for the chicken to hatch out of the egg and grow up before killing it and turning it into a delicious meal for us, we only found a place to sit down towards the back of the festival grounds. Not good, but okay. After the 1.5 hour wait for the choirs to get set, they finally light the fire (somewhat similar tradition to the Olympic fire) and cracked open the Estonian Anthem and the first song. And, even considering the distance, it was as powerful as i hoped it would be. The third song also cracked open the rain. That, by itself, is not much of a problem to me, but as surprising as rain can be on a heavily clouded day, most people were not equipped for it, and immediatelly 20 000 people ran for the sales stalls were rain capes could be bought from. When the stocks of probably about 5000 lifesaving capes ran out, the rest of the them, and some more, decided that now would be a good time to leave. There’s only one thing that can mute 25 000 people singing and it’s 50 000 people bitching and moaning around you. A little reminder for those who missed a few classes in school, rain is water! It won’t kill you, if you get wet. And for those who figured after the first few drops that they can ram their way through this crowd to a dry place before they become soaking wet, they had another thing coming. Honestly, all the people running back and forth between food stalls, toilets, and their seats, with the added bonus of huge smoke clouds from barbeque stalls fogging up all the view, were annoying enough, but this made any sort of enjoyment of the event downright impossible. Okay, i agree there should have been more songs for the full choir, instead of leaving only around 2000 singers on stage for most of the songes, and the repertoire of the first day was somewhat for an aquired taste, wich i might not have, but none the less i would have enjoyed the performance, if i had heard it over the army of idiots. So now it’s time for me to bitch and moan back at them. Fuckers.
The second concert the next day was a merrier event. The weather almost held up, only occasionally forcing people to shuffle around with their rain coats. The songs were more familiar and we got a better seat. After calling some people behind us to order about them minding their own business too loudly, the concert became a joy. Somewhat the spirit of the song festival started to come on towards the end of the day. The feeling of unity, and the essence of this nation and being a part of it. One fun part were the waves. One choir at the top of the arc started it, then the wave travelled down the arc growing wider with it, and somewhere halfway down the arc they made a noise that would have caused the Leonidas’s 300 soldiers to shit themselves and run for cover. As it travelled down the arc, it moved into the vip and expensive ticket area, wich was somewhat less densly populated, and the wave became a bit muted, but as it hit the overcrowded general area, the noise was back, and the wave rolled across the people in the audience. The travel from the top of the arc to the end of the arena took about 15 seconds, wich is actually longer than it seems. After the wave had passed you, you looked backwards how the wave rolled up the hill, and when it had reached the end, people applauded to themselves. This is how estonian people work in standard. At first noone partakes and everyone keeps frowning at everything. And then, as it’s all over, they refuse to leave. No. We just got started. Well about damn time, but i guess better late than never. The choir took up two extra songs on their own initiative, also without a conductor. This, i will also mention, is an event where it’s not the audience that will shout out „once more, once more!!“ when a popular song is just finished, but the singers themselves. And the choir is not the only one singing. Many of the songes were well known folk songs and i estimate about half of the audience muttered along. Wich could help the mass psychosys of unity, but the guy next to me was rather shouting at the top of his lungs than singing, and the old woman behind me was squealing as if she was anal probed by Schwarzenegger-like alines using a pickaxe, rather than singing. So that kind of got damped too, but i didn’t mind much any more.
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| View from the way back of the festival grounds. this is what 7.5% of estonians look like |
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| This is the choir at it's maximum size. everything beyond the two metal pillars with speakers clinging onto them, is the choir |
The next fun thing to do is to leave, and i suggest doing that on foot. The five lane median throughway going past the arena was literally full of people in it’s entire length. Any cars that were standing on entrances to that road had given up – engines turned off and drivers taking a nap on the back seat. Although i might complain over the logistics freeze in the entire city i actually found it really fun. Because i like walking in the middle of the road. Especially if it’s a multilaner with tram tracks and unspeakably complex guide signs and traffic light arrays.
So, for that little half hour window at the end of the two day event, we breathed as one. Wich kind of is the very idea of this highly nationalistic event. I leave that to for you to decide, if that can be considered a success or not. A few suggestions for you, if you ever plan to visit this event – if you don’t intend to stay no matter what, and if you don’t intend to get a normal seat and stay there, don’t go at all. If you intend to go shopping for souvenirs and stuff your bowels with highly unhealthy food (wich i otherwise like a lot) then please, don’t go at all. Or if you can sing, then join a choir, and go singing. That’s the best thing you can do.
