Estonian Song Festival (opens in new tab)

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_Song_and_Dance_Festiva...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_Song_Festival

The role singing and especially the festival plays here was very foreign to me when i moved to estonia. I have to admit I was initially reminded of the movie midsommar when seeing 100 000 people wearing traditional clothing and sing “mu isamaa on minu arm”, many with tears in their eyes. The only way to understand this is to look at the context:

- estonia is one of the least religious countries in the world, the independence day and song festival take an important role that is filled by more religious holidays in other countries, i would say both come even before new years and Christmas for many

- estonia is a tiny country with less than 1 million estonian speakers. the importance of culture and heritage preservation is really high especially in lights of russias argumentation in ukraine. the song festival is maybe the most vividly lived example of this

- the singing revolution cemented the role of singing even further in national identity

- last and most importantly more than 130 000 estonians were killed or deported under soviet occupation and estonian identity was threatened to be wiped out. the song festival is a symbol for overcoming oppression and remembering the lost ones.

No idea how this fits on Hacker News, but I am happy to see my country mentioned here nonetheless.

I warmly recommended to start singing in choirs as a novice, there are at least a few good choirs that cater to beginners, at least in Sweden. Of course there are many more really good choirs.

I am not a singer at all, but singing in a choir is really fun.

related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_song_festivals

For fans of Estonian culture who may also be interested in the nation's history post-independence, I highly recommend the documentary Rodeo which is mainly centered on Prime Minister Mart Laar. Neil Taylor's book is also a good intro to the country.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/rodeo https://www.amazon.com/Estonia-A-Modern-History/dp/178738337...

One of the things I always wonder about with these massive choirs with 10-30 thousand singers is how do you synchronize everyone so that it doesn't sound like a muddled mess? With such a large group the audio delays due to the speed of sound from the front to back or side to side of the choir start to become non-negligible.

There’s a documentary “The Singing Revolution,” which covers how this festival related to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/4njksFKyycY?si=vrULaKl20rVx9L9g

Every five years, up to 60,000 Estonians meet for Laulupidu to sing songs together.

The next iteration will take in July 2025 (https://2023.laulupidu.ee/en/registraton-to-song-celebration...)

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTdOiCa0-4o for a beautiful excerpt of the 2019 event.