(Excerpted from Our Summer in Estonia Amazon.com)
Estonia's association as a singing nation began in the city of Tartu, home of Tartu University, in June, 1869. The inspiration for a national song festival came from Johann Voldemar Jannsen, a leader of a movement known as the National Awakening a mid-19th century period, when Estonia's long suppressed people set about discovering and creating a national identity. Jannsen founded the first Estonian newspaper. His name sounds German, because when serfdom was abolished, many Estonians took their Baltic German master's name. who, in Jannsen's case, was Voldemar. Jannsen became inspired by seeing music festivals in Germany and Switzerland, and German choirs in Tallinn. He knew of the Estonian peasant's rich store of folk music. Why not an All-Estonian song festival?
At the very first festival, Jannsen's daughter, Lydia Koidula, who would go on to become famous as an Estonian poet and playwright, penned the lyrics of the song My Fatherland, You Are My Love, that has become the unofficial national anthem. There were continuous festivals up to WWI, and one every five years between world wars. During the Soviet years following WWII, the festival was tightly controlled and programmed not to celebrate Estonia but the glories of socialism.
Reading a history of the song festival, published in 1985 during the Soviet occupation, is revealing. The author notes that there was a "popular revolution" in 1940 when Estonia "joined the Soviet Union," and following WWII, Estonia was "liberated." No Estonian today would agree with that interpretation of history. (more to follow)
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