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Written in
fRoots
issue 288, 2007
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Estonian Traditional Music 2006
Estonian Tradition Music Centre, no number (2006)
VÄGILASED
Ema Õpetus
Eesti Raadio/Vägilased, no number (2006)
SVJATA VATRA
Svjata Vatra
Own label 4740156902280 (2006)
RO:TORO
Estonian Bagpipe
Tutl SHD 78 (2006)
Back in 1998-9, less than a decade after the country’s new-found independence,
when I was writing the Estonian section of the present edition of The Rough
Guide to World Music there were virtually no CDs of Estonian roots music on
Estonian labels, and precious few on any others. But as a new edition of the
RGTWM looms, things have changed. Traditional music has developed quite a youth
following, and a growing number of musicians are emerging from the folk music
courses at the Viljandi Cultural College, or involved in the Estonian
Traditional Music Centre organisation that has staged Viljandi folk music
festival every July since 1993 and also in recent years other events including
Tartu’s Maa Ja Ilm festival in March.
Some nearby countries – Denmark and Finland, for
example – have drawn attention to the range of their burgeoning roots music
scenes by releasing annual compilations, and the Estonian Traditional Music
Centre has followed suit with Estonian Traditional Music 2006. It’s indicative
of the new roots music activity that there are now enough Estonian-released CDs
to make seventeen tracks from different albums released since 2001, and most are
from the past couple of years.
The CD is a showcase and encouragement of recent
releases on labels available to the compilers, not a full Estonian roots
sampler. Though it does include a 2001 track of a traditional female vocal group
from Setumaa, there’s nothing from significant Estonian roots musicians such as
young fiddler and electronic musician Tiit Kikas, singer Kirile Loo (who made
two interesting albums for a German label but seems to have gone quiet since the
turn of the millennium), or those who, while influential, haven’t recorded much
or recently, such as kannel player Tuule Kann or traditional instrumentalist,
singer and ethnomusicologist Igor Tõnurist. Nor is there any of the pioneering
traditional music work of composer Veljo Tormis. But it is a useful taster of
what’s happening now, particularly among the Viljandi-centred young musicians,
and pointer to what might evolve in the future. It’s still early days; some
tracks are more confident and accomplished than others, but that was the case,
too, with the early Danish Folk Music Council compilations, and things have
certainly developed there.
What is happening is not folkish guitar-toting
but a direct engagement with the old folk songs known in Estonian as regilaul,
which in their narrow compass of rarely more than a fifth and their short
repetitive tunes are the runo-song kin of Finland’s runolaulu. And the new
enthusiasts are taking up traditional instruments including kannel (Estonia’s
close kin to Finland’s kantele), hiiukannel (bowed lyre), jew’s-harp and
Estonian bagpipes (which have a single-reeded chanter and up to three low-slung
drones, and had nearly disappeared during the 20th century).
It was clear from the sight of the Maa ja Ilm
Festival audience, largely early twenties or younger but with a healthy mix of
the more aged, enthusiastically circle and chain-dancing to Vägilased, and the
increasing audience and number of Estonian bands at Viljandi festival, that the
scene for home-grown roots music has achieved that critical energy or fun-factor
which attracts audiences and players. It’s still early days and the bands aren’t
high-powered or flash yet, but their members, many of them current or past
students at the Viljandi college, are young, motivated and experimental and
carry their audience with them as they explore.
Vägilased (“The Mighties”) is a sextet featuring
the vocals of Meelika Hainsoo and Cätlin Jaago. Hainsoo plays fiddle, Jaago
plays bagpipes, flutes and jew’s-harp, and they’re joined by Russian diatonic
accordion, guitar, bass and drums. Arranging these runo-songs in way that will
enthuse modern ears isn’t easy; Vägilased applies a variety of texture, weaves
harmonies and rhythms around and across them, and punctuates with the occasional
less ancient dance tune, and in this shifting instrumental environment the
songs’ short lines and melodic repetition become a virtue. There’s an appealing,
inventive unpretentiousness about the album, and the band, while still
developing, is clearly one of the leaders in the new movement.
Svjata Vatra, also well received at Maa Ja Ilm
this year, is another promising new band, with potential not yet fully realised.
Leading it are the charismatic vocals and trombone of Ukrainian Ruslan
Trochynskyi, who was a member of the meaty Ukrainian folk-brass-rock band
Haydamaky and now lives in Estonia, where he has put together a quartet with
Estonian musicians on bagpipes, accordion, flute and percussion, playing a mix
of Estonian and Ukrainian trad plus some originals. On this debut album it feels
like most of the energy is coming from Trochynskyi, with the rest of the band
not really gelling yet. His vocal and trombone are strong but not fully
supported by the other instruments, and the very literal, stark recording
doesn’t enrich things. Numbers that could be powerful, such the chant-like
Revolutsioon, don’t peak as they could. The percussion, largely of just
darabukka & tambourine jingles, could do with being wider in tonal range and
less tentative, and the accordion could do more but tends to sit back or out
rather than really digging in. The bagpipes and flute help a lot when they’re
playing, but in much of the album only two or three of the band seem to be
contributing at a time, increasing the feeling that there’s a key player
missing.
As in most new scenes, with limited performing
opportunities, musicians tend to play with more than one band. Ro:toro is built
around the twin bagpipes of Vägilased’s Cätlin Jaago and Svjata Vatra’s Sandra
Sillamaa, joined by saxist Marko Mägi and Svjata Vatra percussionist Silver
Sepp. Sepp here forsakes darabukka and tambourine for a more eccentric range of
percussion centering on water-drums made of floating inverted plastic washing-up
bowls, which emit a muted booming sound, augmented with sundry woody and
metallic clatterings, pinging bicycle spokes and tuned nails. The bulk of the
band’s repertoire is dance tunes, learned largely from recordings and
transcriptions of Estonian bagpipers in the early 20th century, when the
instrument was still popular in village life and celebration. On their CD,
licensed to the Faroese label Tutl, they play them and a handful of originals
with plenty of life and variation of pace, the unison and harmonising skirl of
pipes well leavened by the sax, which moves between rhythmic patterns and
melodic forays, and the tonal variety of non-shop-bought percussion by Sepp (who
delivers an unexpected vocal on a ‘hidden’ track on the tail that could more
usefully have been included in the album proper).
The Estonian Traditional Music Centre, a central
contact for much of this music, is at www.folk.ee;
meet the bands and hear some tracks at
www.vagilased.galerii.ee,
www.svjatavatra.ee and
http://rootoro.mcp.pri.ee
© 2007 Andrew Cronshaw
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