A new song

In Estonia, singer-songwriters are in the ascendant. They follow a long tradition that extends over hundreds of years, and runs to more than 1.3 million pages of lyrics in the Tartu literary museum. A 2024 outdoor concert replayed on TV on St John’s Day astonished me in the beauty of the music. A legend in his lifetime, Jaan Tätte brought in friends to sing a large and mostly original repertoire of folk music. The arrangements were spare – accordion, acoustic guitars, bass - the voices clear, and the song choice, emotional.

Jaan Tatte (born 1964), Estonian singer-songwriter

This is an Estonian version of la nueva canción, a movement in Latin America and also Spain that peaked in the turbulent 1960s and 70s, including dictatorships that came and went. Among the leaders were Violeta Parra and Victor Jara (Chile), Mercedes Sosa and Atahualpa Yupanqui (Argentina), Silvio Rodríguez (Cuba), and Joan Manuel Serrat (Spain).

Back in Estonia, it was chance that put me in front of a TV at the right time in a lounge adjoining a sauna. I was about to go back in from a swim in the lake, but sat enthralled, wrapped in a towel, and drinking beer with Paul-Gunnar who translated and explained what was happening.

He told me that as soon as Jaan Tätte and Marco Matvere announce a performance, the tickets sell out in a few minutes. While visiting a market in Iisaku on a rainy Saturday, Matvere and his accordion band sang sea shanties, an acquired taste for some probably, while the magic of the music lies in the lyrics, and Matvere’s quiet charisma and dry humour.

Tätte shares these personal characteristics, and is utterly compelling. As are the other singers sharing the stage, Matvere, Liisi Koikson, Mari Jürjens and Jaan Pehk. All are national heros, attracting from Estonians a deep, quiet respect.

I found myself wishing I was there, at a concert of this sort, and the following evening at a nearby suvila got my wish. Following a dinner from the grill with boiled potatoes and salads, and three rounds of a smoke sauna and swims in a forest-fringed lake, wine was poured and a guitar made its appearance.

Having mentioned my virtual encounter with Jaan Tätte, his songs Sõprade laul no.6 or “Friends Song (no. 6)”, took flight in a four-part harmony of soprano and alto, tenor and baritone. Many of the songs I heard that evening carry a resonance with Estonians, a celebration of the culture, political independence and freedom, and of a way of life reborn after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

During those dark times singers such as Anne Veski gained fame for singing Estonian language covers of western pop music. My friends told me they were shocked on learning that these were not original Estonian tunes when channels to the West reopened.   

And so it is that the newer songs rub shoulders with the old, bringing new life to Estonianness. Sitting around a long table, mosquitoes attacking my head and ankles, sipping wine and listening to Ta lendab mesipuu poole, I found myself thinking, my eyes shining, of grandma Erika in her blue dress and white cardigan, her hands clasped across her lap, fondly looking at her family.

At some point in the evening I sang the first two verses of Tule ääres istun mina, “by the fireside I sit”, and everyone joined in. Without knowing how it came about, the evening ended with an acapella version of Scarborough Fair, and then Simon and Garfunkel’s “April, come she will”, and John Denver’s Country Roads.