A Baltic music: The folklore movement in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, 1968-1991

Abstract

Folksongs have been a symbol of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian culture for more than two centuries. Herder's Volkslieder was a model which demonstrated that folk poetry made these peoples equal to others in the world, and showed how songs could be used to advance national liberation. These ideas were brought to life in the choral movements and national song festivals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and were maintained after Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were annexed by the Soviet Union. In the late 1960s, a new movement emerged, calling for "authentic" performance of folksongs in small, inclusive groups, in contrast to the spectacular displays of Soviet folklore performed in front of passive audiences. The loud, unrefined singing style of rural traditions challenged the official Soviet models of art. Government efforts to suppress the new folklore ensembles only raised their popularity, and by the early eighties, folklore festivals were attracting many thousands of people. As a broadly based phenomenon which successfully evaded government control, the folklore movement provided a model for mass activism in the Baltic after 1985. This dissertation presents a history of the Baltic folklore movement up to 1991, when Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania gained independence from the Soviet Union. Participant observation of three leading folklore ensembles--Ratilio (Lithuania), Leegajus (Estonia), and Skandinieki (Latvia)--revealed these groups as communities which are held together in ways similar to the imagining of a national community. The example of modern Baltic singing traditions complements the discussions about folklorism which emerged in both East and West Europe during the 1960s and 1970s. Folklorism, defined here as the conscious recognition and use of folklore as a symbol of ethnic, regional, or national identity, is itself a tradition which has folklorized and nationalized in the modern Baltic cultures. Baltic folklorism today is a new variant in the long-lived tradition of using folksongs and singing as a means of national self-realization.