My first run-in with Estonia came when I was 12 or 13. We had only recently moved back to Saint Petersburg (FL) and my mother had jump started her passion for dance. She fell in with some famous former-Soviet dancers who were living in the sister city. Elena Martinson, while apparently born in St Petersburg (RU), identifies herself as Estonian. Her husband, Andrei Ustinov, was also born in St Petersburg. They were both principle dancers with the Kirov Ballett. Andrei was one of if not the last artistic defector the US. They are tremendous dancers, but I know them mostly as people and through my mother's many stories about them. At any rate, Elena was the first contact I had with Estonia.

During college I had a dream about going to Talin and then taking a ferry to Finland to do some trekking. Or perhaps I'd go to Talin and then head south to the other Balkin states to do research on folk music (Balkin and then continue south to hit up the Slavic tradition). But that never happened. All of this is to say that while I have no real connection with Estonia, I've heard stories and seen photos and it's been in my imagination a very neat little country of castles and dancing and singing.

So tonight I was excited to see The Singing Revolution (I tried to see it yesterday, but I ran into a friend (Altes) from New College and talked to him for three hours instead). It's the ('till tonight unknown to me) story of how Estonia gained its independence from the Soviet Union days before the Union's dissolution. It's a remarkable story that I won't try and tell in any abreviated form here. The people of Estonia did peacefully (including an incredible peaceful diffusion of an attempted coupe). The film is all smiles really and likely avoids some of the dicier issues surrounding the Russian population in the country. But it's a great story and recommend it.

So why I do feel that I can write about the Estonian revolution in a music blog? Because the film is in part about the role that music played in holding together a country of less than one million together over almost a century of foreign rule. These people lost one quarter of their population to the Nazis and the Soviets and yet their sense of cultural identity remained strong enough to peacefully gain independence from one of the most oppressive regimes in history. It was in part their culture that pulled these people together.

Here you have a nation with one of the largest folk song books in the world. Estonians have gathered every year for almost 150 years. Something like 10% or more of the population comes out to sing traditional songs every year. In 1987 300,000 spontaneously gathered at the singing grounds for days to sing Estonian songs and really kick start the revolution that would eventually lead to independence.

I don't know if it's music that made the Estonian movement possible. Perhaps any kind of tradition would be possible. But outside of dancing (think the rave seen in the Matrix sequel), it's hard to imagine what else could bring folks together. Almost anybody can sing. And the more folks you have doing it the better. Music might be the ultimate participatory artistic and cultural form of expression. It's physical and easy and seemingly everyone in the history of man kind has done it (I spent several hours today at the Carlos Museum, where I saw four thousand-year-old instruments).

I guess I have no great insight into the power of singing. See the film to get a sense of what I'm talking about.