Two Estonians

They know each other well, a grizzled Jaan Tätte sharing a stage at an outdoor venue with a much younger Mari Jürjens, among Estonia’s leading singers. It’s folk music at one level, at another, an expression of Estonianness, a celebration of freedom post the 1991 reindependence. This genre has an emotional weight that brings out goose bumps and shining eyes in even the most stoic Estonian.

This is why I have come, along with a sell-out crowd of 850. No one speaking Russian, say two family members who are also here. For them, the bear lives not far away, and I recall a road sign driving east from Tallinn: Peterburi 263km. However, Estonians I met are more worried about Russians in Estonia clinging to their language and Soviet ideals, than of ordinary Russians across the border.

Every concert of Tätte’s has him singing Silveri laul, a song he wrote with longtime friend Marco Matvere. A dialogue with Long John Silver, the one-eyed pirate and villain in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”, this has become a classic in Estonia, the chorus, a rousing, “Alone, I am again / at a bar in a pub / girls on my knees / and this is where I will end my days.”

Missing his left eye, his treasure, and the rest of his crew at the bottom of sea, his deeds all turned to dust, Silver can hardly be said to represent an Estonian aspiration. Even so, the tune has a resonance with Estonians. 

Tätte usually sings it with Matvere, a writer and singer in a bass voice of sea shanties whom we saw perform with an accordion band at a Saturday market in Iisaku. In 2010-2012 the pair sailed with two others around the world on a catamaran called Nordea, leaving from, and returning to Tallinn.

People tell me that after two years of living together in cramped quarters – and they visited Auckland and the Bay of Islands in New Zealand - the singers-turned-sailors needed a break from each other; fair enough. They now perform less often together when in times past they were inseparable.

In an interview, Tätte said of travel, “Mulle meeldivad võimsad ja avarad merevaated, mäed, need kohad, kus inimene ei ole midagi ära rikkunud,” – I like majestic and open sea views, mountains, those places that humans have not yet ruined.”

Between tunes, Tätte tells anecdotes, and says his audience is very polite, unlike Matvere’s fans, drunken old men who by now would have taken their shirts off and started yelling.

Tätte and Jürjens have in common is that they both studied acting, and that they are currently out of work. Hence the need to sing. Summer is a busy time for both (as for all performing musicians in Estonia), travelling from one venue to another. Loyal fans drive around the country to capture their shows, as if each one will be their last.   

In contrast to Tätte’s gruff tones, Jürjens speaks and sings in a beautiful, clear harmonious voice. When she was 17 she wrote Paradis, another well-known post-independence song. Like others of this calibre, choirs performed it at the laulupidu in Tallinn.

I learn later that one of my young relatives on the Napp side was singing at that song festival, and she remembers singing the song. On leaving Estonia, I caught up with her in Tallinn, and she says she listens rarely to Jürjens’ music; her songs are too introspective, nostalgic or sad for her tastes.

Last year Jürjens was voted Estonian singer of the year. It seems strange that recognition has come so late, especially as a younger set, Sadu, are now taking the stage by storm. Jürjens is a stunning performer, I find, at times singing solo, and at others, with Tätte.

Tuule vaiksel ööl, “a windstill night”, is another of Tätte’s iconic songs; the chorus runs “I already want to call you / again, again and again / the wind direction is in the north / now is my time / to put a storm in your heart.”

Everywhere I went in Estonia, friends and family shared with me their favourite Estonian reindependence songs. Another singer-songwriter is Tõnis Mägi whose rousing song Koit, the dawn, has been performed at the laulupidu. The chorus kicks off with, “Shout - we will break everything / so that all can be free in a breathless spirit / See – the ice is broken / let’s join hands, join our forces”, and much more on this theme, of severing the bonds of slavery and being a free people. 

In his song Palve, or prayer, Mägi calls on the supreme god to protect Estonia, a tune of the Singing Revolution of the late 1980s and early 1990s. This tune rings more powerfully than ever in these uncertain times, and I listen to these tunes, as well as “What land is this?”, and others on my laptop in a studio apartment in Helsinki, my last night in Europe by way of farewell to Estonia for this time.