The Latvian Song and Dance Festivals

I’m at the Estrāde, the great bandstand in Mežaparks, a large wooded park north of Riga’s city center. This is where the Latvian Song and Dance Festivals’ main events take place, especially the mass choir concert. These festivals are some of the largest amateur choral events in the world, and are also on UNESCO’s Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity list.

These festivals originated in Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th century, with the first full-scale Latvian song festival taking place in 1873. Music was one way the Latvians identified themselves as distinct from the local German and Russian ruling classes in the tsarist Russian Empire. After the fall of independent Latvia, during the Soviet occupation, the festivals were used to praise the Soviet regime, which hoped to wed local national sentiment to Marxism-Leninism.

However, the festival tradition was also continued by Latvians in exile, first in the postwar German refugee camps, and in Western countries from 1950 on. Even after Latvian independence was restored in 1991, the Latvians in Canada and the U.S. have continued to hold these events.

In fact, in Summer 2022, it’s Minnesota’s turn! If you’re in the Twin Cities, see if you can get tickets to any of the Latvian Song Festival events during June 29 - July 24, 2022. Learn more at https://www.latviansongfest2022.org/?lang=en. 

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In Riga, where the next festival is slated for 2023, the stadium-sized facility has recently been reconstructed, with increased spectator capacity; built-in space for shops, exhibition halls, food stands and restrooms; and acoustic and weather-proofing improvements for the open-air stage. Last August, this reconstruction project won Latvia’s main national architectural award for 2021. Although the Delta variant of the coronavirus hit the Baltic states harder and later than other countries, cancelling all mass concerts in autumn, sightseers regularly come to stroll and marvel at the enormous concert venue, as you can see in the pictures. 

Today, the song festivals are one of the places where the Latvians regularly pull together to achieve something monumental. When it’s time to sing in a choir or see a concert, this beloved place is world-class. Currently, the most in-demand choral music composer internationally is Latvia’s Ēriks Ešenvalds, whom I had the pleasure of meeting when he came to Minneapolis to direct a university master seminar there. 

When I was growing up in Oregon, where the Latvian exile community was very small, my parents were fortunate enough to have relatives in Soviet Latvia who sent them gifts of books and music. Some of the records were hokey-sounding Soviet pop, others were the officially sanctioned paeans to Lenin. But one album I listened to many times was the 1973 song festival choir concert. Even my callow, untrained ears could hear the difference in how the socialist anthems were sung-- correctly, without emotion-- compared with more authentic choir songs, where the emotion flowed. Or did I just think I heard that? Memory can play tricks on you, and the Baltic is slippery ground when it comes to historical memory. 

It’s hard to put the feeling of the combined choir songs into words. Some things you must experience for yourself.

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