The Latvian Song and Dance Festival
Christina and I recently attended a concert of the General Latvian Song and Dance Festival. It’s an extremely important week-long cultural event held every five years in Riga. All three Baltic states have similar national song festivals and in 2003 they were added to UNESCO’s “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
This year was the 150th anniversary of Latvia’s festival. This was actually the second time we’ve attended the festival. The first time was 10 years ago. So, since tickets were expensive and really difficult to get, we only attended one of the choral concerts. I remember the dance concerts being really interesting, but it was the choral concert I remembered being so beautiful and moving.
More history and info available at the official festival website!
Approximately 40,000 performers participate in the festival. 1,600 groups from the whole country assemble to perform. Many of them start their training as young school children and spend years learning the requisite repertoire. Since traditional songs and dances are considered an integral part of Latvian cultural identity they are taught as part of the public education curriculum. There’s a separate National School Youth Song and Dance Festival held in an alternating 5-year cycle.
More than 100 international groups were also invited to participate in the festival, many of them from the Latvian diaspora. This year included representation from 22 countries including a Japanese choir, a Ukrainian boys chorus, a wind orchestra from Germany, a dance collective from Finland, etc.
The large choral concerts are held in an outdoor amphitheater in a beautiful park on the outskirts of Riga called Mežaparks (Forest Park). The large choral concerts are usually 4 or 5 hours long, so it was nice to see that significant upgrades to the amphitheater’s facilities had been made since the last time we attended. There were lots of food and drink options, vendors, and the restrooms were improved.
The concert started with some wind band music, which was fine, but obviously not the highlight. Many people were missing from their seats, presumably taking advantage of the food and drink vendors. There was also a performance by a kokle ensemble. A kokle is a traditional string instrument similar to a zither. Click here for a video of a performance!
The weather was perfect. As the evening progressed, the sun set behind the stage, and the instrumental music gave way to a mix of accompanied and a cappella choral music.
The concert didn’t seem as moving as it did 10 years ago, but the last hour was still magical. Everyone had returned from their beer and shashlik runs and were seated in their places. The night had cooled; all the old ladies were wrapped in blankets. With the sky dark and the stage lighting in full effect, all the choirs assembled together, approximately 15,000 singers, and sang popular and traditional Latvian songs. Many in the audience sang along. Even I recognized the songs and knew some of the words after only a year and half here. This isn’t the only time one can hear these songs.
This was the night before the Grand Finale Concert. Tickets for the Grand Finale sold out in under an hour! Had this been the Grand Finale, the singing, accompanied by dancing, would have gone on until 5am the next morning. So we started the daunting task of getting home. After standing on a bus that didn’t move for 20 minutes we decided to start the 2-hour walk home. Luckily, about half way we found an abandoned rent-a-scooter – it was a good night 😉
Čau, for now!
