Latvian Song Festivals – the Voice of a Nation

The importance of song and dance to the people of the Baltic nations cannot be overstated. For many decades, song festivals have brought people together to celebrate music, costume, dance and culture. In addition to local and regional events, each of the Baltic nations hosts a national festival every 4 or 5 years. Collectively the Baltic Song Festivals were included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2008.

The first song festival of this type was actually held in Switzerland in 1843. They quickly spread through Germany to the Baltics via the Baltic German populations, with the first national festivals being held in Estonia in 1869, Latvia in 1873 and Lithuania in 1924. Local festivals can attract several thousand people, while the larger national ones can bring in tens of thousands.

The core of the festivals has always been acapella singing. There are male choirs, female choirs, mixed choirs and children’s choirs. Over time, other cultural components have been added such as traditional costume contests, orchestral music and dance.

Over the years I have located two Zekants family members in Song Festival books. One was in the 1938 National Festival in Riga and the other was in a regional festival in the Vidzeme region of northern Latvia in 1939.

The 9th National Latvian Song Festival – June 1938

In 1938, Latvia held its 9^th National Song Festival. The political climate was chilly, with Kārlis Ulmanis, the Latvian prime minister, declaring a “State of War” and in essence establishing a very controversial dictatorship. The political climate in Europe as a whole was also tense as Hitler had just annexed Austria in March. This festival must have provided a much needed dose of normalcy and joy as the future became more and more uncertain.

However, the 9th Song Festival was somewhat co-opted by the Ulmanis government as a tool of propaganda, forcing the organizers to include patriotic songs, decorations and speeches. This was not well received by all, but it did allow for the largest festival to date with over 350 choirs, 16,000 singers and over 100,000 attendees. It took place on June 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th and was held at the Pārdaugava Uzvaras Park on the west bank of the river.

Emilija Zekants was the only daughter of Andrejs Zekants. (I wrote about Andrejs and his tragic murder in a previous post.) Emilija would have been 30 years old in 1938, and had only recently been married. She is listed here under her maiden name so presumably she was not able to change the name before the program went to print. Emilija sang with the “Rīgas latviešu dziedāšanas biedrības koris” or “The Riga Latvian Society Mixed Choir”. This was one of the oldest and traditional amateur choirs in Latvia, having been established in 1879. This choir was a regular entrant into the National Song Festivals for decades.

Here is video footage from the 1938 festival complete with President Ulmanis making a speech: WATCH HERE

The Dikļi Song Festival – July 1939

This regional song festival was held in Dikļi in the Valmiera region of northern Latvia. Dikļi is considered the ‘original’ location of song festivals in Latvia, with the first one being celebrated in 1864. The festival was the idea of Dikļi parish priest and writer Juris Neikens. Neikens, who died in 1868, could never have imagined that what he had begun would grow so large. The 1864 event included six male choirs and a children’s choir from the surrounding five counties. For several years after that, the festival was held in different towns as it paved the way for the first national event in Riga in 1873.

My husband’s grandfather, Žanis Zekants, participated in the Dikļi Song Festival in July 1939. This was the 75^th anniversary of the festival and was so special that it was considered a national event and was attended by President Kārlis Ulmanis himself. The chief conductor of this event was the renowned conductor Teodors Kalniņš, who was at the same time serving as chief choirmaster of the Latvian National Opera.

The choir that Žanis joined was called the “Jāņa Cimzes ģimnāzijas absolventu biedrība koris” or in English the “Jāņa Cimzes Gymnasium Alumni Society Choir”. This was a choir associated with the Jāņa Cimzes Gymnasium School in Valka, a town on the Estonian border. This school was named after famous Latvian musician and teacher, Jānis Cimzes. Cimzes was a 19th century academic who played several instruments, studied music theory and collected Latvian folk songs. He is considered the first prominent figure in the history of Latvian music and is sometimes called “the Father of Latvian choral music”.

The school opened in 1920 as the Valka Secondary School (changing its name in homage to Cimzes in the early 1930s) in the building that was originally the teacher’s seminary where Cimzes taught for over 40 years in the 19th century. Žanis’s choir director for this event was Jānis Vilciņš. Vilciņš was a respected school principal in Valka as well as a choir director and music advocate during the interwar period. After the war, he served as a teacher and choir director as a refugee in Germany and then again in his new home of Milwaukee in the USA, where he died in 1988.

In 1939, the Jāņa Cimzes Gymnasium Alumni Society Choir joined with the 7th Valka Guard Regiment of the Latvian Army. Žanis was serving with the army in Valka and had just been promoted to the position of Corporal – Radiotelegrapher the previous October. This would be the connection between him and this choir. Interestingly, in Žanis’s military records he had a stay in hospital in Riga for about a week for an unknown medical procedure and he was then granted six weeks leave to recuperate. The date he went into hospital in Riga was the 19^th of July, just three days after the song festival. Did he end up performing in the festival? We will never know, but we do know that his name was printed in the program and that is part of the historical record.

1940 Latgale Song Festival – June 1940

I actually have no evidence that any Zekants family members participated in this festival in Daugavpils in 1940. But it still plays a role in our story. This is a very well-known event as it was the last song festival in an independent Latvia for many decades. Teodors Zekants was probably working as a prison warden at Daugavpils prison at the time. There would have been thousands of people coming for the event, swelling the normal population significantly.

The festival took place on the 15th and 16th of June. On the 16th, Kārlis Ulmanis, who was supposed to be there in person, issued a radio address to the nation where he urged the country to remain calm and famously told Latvians everywhere “I shall remain in my place, you remain in yours”. The Soviet government had already given a warning to Latvia on the 15th that it had no choice but to submit. The Ulmanis government requested an extra day before the invasion so that the thousands of people at this Song Festival could get home safely. The Soviet government allowed this and the Red Troops did not enter until the 17th, the day after the festival ended.

Here is a description from the book I am working on about what this might have been like for Teodors:

The entirety of the night had been bathed in a soft summer twilight; total darkness kept at bay by the extreme northern latitude. Teodors had been up since long before sunrise. In fact, he had barely slept at all. He found himself staring out of a third-story window of the prison thinking about the previous day. The Latgale Song Festival had taken place on the 16^th of June, welcoming tens of thousands of participants and spectators to celebrate the Latvian love of music. Teodors had watched the immense crowds headed down Stacijas St. The people were heading to the train station, headed back to their homes at the conclusion of the festival. Normally there would have been an aura of joy and optimism in the air after an event like this. But Teodors could sense that something was different. That feeling of joy and lightness had been replaced by one of apprehension and fear.

The rumours of the past few days were becoming reality. Soviet troops would be invading Latvia at any moment. The president of Latvia, Kārlis Ulmanis, had asked the people of his nation to welcome the enemy peacefully. Bloodshed was to be avoided. The people of the Baltics were being handed over to the Soviets on a silver platter and there seemed very little anyone could do about it. One thing that Teodors knew for sure – he and his family were once again facing the horror of a Soviet state. Home was no longer safe.

Standing at the upstairs prison window, looking out upon this beautiful mid-summer morning, Teodors stood motionless. His mind swam with memories and emotions of so many years ago – narrowly escaping with their lives as the Bolshevik terror advanced on the Crimean Peninsula. Was history repeating itself? As he stood there, frozen in time, he began to hear the unmistakable sound of marching troops. Alongside the rhythmic drone of Soviet boots was the soft but audible clapping and excited shouting coming from local supporters along the road. The marching got louder and louder, but still Teodors stood there, unable to move. Soon the troops became visible. Hundreds of Red soldiers, marching in formation, as they made their way up the main road. The invading army, with no resistance whatsoever, marched right past Daugavpils prison and continued north through town to their base camp at Stropi.

These soldiers marched right past the Stropi Open-Air Stage where only hours before, over 60,000 participants and spectators had been joyfully celebrating what it meant to be Latvian. Thousands of voices melted together as one as the crowd sang the Latvian national anthem “Dievs, svētī Latviju!”. It was sung three times through. It would be the last time the anthem would be sung by the people for over 50 years. It was banned the following day by the occupying Soviet regime.

The Song Festival Today

Song festivals did continue throughout the Soviet Era, both in Latvia and in diaspora populations around the world. In Latvia, these Soviet-era festivals were often held in association with important Soviet anniversaries and commemorations and certainly were rife with Soviet propaganda. Sports events, military parades and Russian music were added to the festivities during this time as well as dance and brass-band competitions.

By the late 1980s, song festivals had become a platform for non-violent resistance against the failing Soviet regime. Known today as the ‘Singing Revolution’, the three Baltic countries used their love of song to help bring about independence. At the 1990 National Latvian Song Festival, the national anthem could be heard once again, as thousands of voices, for the first time since 1940, sang out “Dievs, svētī Latviju!” – God Bless Latvia.

“The Twentieth Song Celebration in the summer of 1990 became the most beautiful triumphal arch on the road to the restoration of Latvia’s national independence. […] This celebration has been unique in its emotional intensity. It was crowned with all of the organisational, artistic and spiritual experience of previous celebrations,” – Māra Zālīte (Grauzdiņa, Ilma. The Little Song Celebration Encyclopaedia. 2004, p 58)

In 2021, the grand and impressive Mežaparks Open-Air Stage was reopened to the public after a major restoration and the festival is just as popular as ever, attracting tens of thousands of singers and spectators every five years. In 2018, over 80,000 tickets were sold on the first day of sales. The most recent national festival was held in 2023 and represented the 150th anniversary of the event. The next one, the 28th, will be held in 2028.

The Latvian National Library has an entire section of their website dedicated to the history of song festivals with access to historical information, photographs, video and audio footage, biographies, advertsing artwork, program books and more: Song and Dance Celebrations

Maybe you can find one of your family members in the choir lists!