I HAVE HAD MANY FOLKS by now, and each one of them has been different. The first Viljandi Folk Music Festival I ever saw was more than a decade ago. That was the year that Zetod tried to integrate a DJ into their set. I remember how I sent my New York friends clips of these serious-looking young men in their funny white outfits with the DJ scratching his vinyls away. “This,” I had said, “is Estonian culture.”
There was also the Folk where my daughter ate about eight ice creams in one day, and I wound up holding her by the arm and leg and spinning her around because she was so high on sugar. That might have been the Folk where we went home early and fell asleep together, only to be awakened by Silver Sepp banging on the window at 4 AM, asking me to come out and party.
My house used to be a motel, you know, and friends of friends would wind up sleeping there. Once someone crawled up the ladder we had in the kitchen and slept up in the loft. I remember walking into the kitchen the next day, only to see his feet dangling over the edge in the harsh noon sunlight. It was as if a vampire was resting in my kitchen. Last year’s Folk has gone down in family lore as the Folk when daddy drank too much cognac on the last night and didn’t bring his daughters churros from the food vendor as had been agreed. For some reason, they always remind me of this. “Remember how you were drunk and we didn’t get churros?”
I suppose I have been a bad father.
For me, all of these festivals are just points in time that can be stitched or connected together. This year’s Folk was the 30th anniversary, but it’s the sum of all of those festivals that creates that sense of camaraderie and shared history. Those who revisit the festival develop a tapestry of relationships and experiences. There is also something so gentle, so special, so fragile about the little community that has developed around this festival. Year after year, you see the same faces returning to the Castle Ruins. The ones you loved, the ones you still love, the ones you will always love and, also, the ones who didn’t love you. There are the old loves, and the new loves, and some loves leave, and new ones arrive and restore love to your heart. Everyone who goes to the festivals has these kinds of stories. Within this tight-knit community, all kinds of things can happen between people, but it is at this gathering that differences are set aside.
The festival also abounds with weird instances and sights that, in hindsight, are difficult to recollect. I remember how last year, during the Trad.Attack! concert, I looked out across the oceans of heads to see one young woman staring at me from across the space of the Second Cherry Hill in the twilight. We had only met once, but there she was, staring at me and smiling. Her eyes were so full of something, maybe promise, but whatever they promised was never revealed. This year, she happened to pass me again, on maybe the same day, and during the same concert, and I took her hand for a second. It reminded me of a time when I was in India, and saw a monkey staring at me from the top of a temple. We just stood there, staring at each other through the humidity of the subcontinent, just like that girl watched me on the hill.
There are other odd situations. A man appeared the last night of the festival out of nowhere and invited me and a friend to see Voldemar Kuslap sing in Rakvere. Aapo Ilves stood by the cocktail truck looking like a cross between a werewolf and Jesus and talking about Trochynskyi. “He is our Ukrainian,” Aapo Ilves said, generously, “and you are our American.”
On Sunday night, during the Zetod concert, I saw two teenage girls performing ritualistic dances by the trash bins. When the music became more intense, they pretended as if they were wild animals. They went around in circles, pawing at the air, as if they were two bears fighting each other in the forests. I stood there beneath a tree with a certain businessman and his daughters and watched them. I wondered if anyone was paying attention to the bear fight.
There is also the exhaustion that sets in. You try to see everything and fail, and then you can’t even make sense of what is happening around you. Some brass band was playing by my house one morning, but I have no idea who they were. When I walked to the festival on Sunday morning, I encountered a man sprawled on a bench while clutching his guitar in his sleep. His glasses lay beside him. Nearby, another man was smoking and watching the scene with tired blue eyes and nodding, as if trying to reassure himself that it wasn’t all a dream. It’s such a small festival, you know. It’s a small festival, in a small town, in a small country, playing music that is, mostly, enjoyed by a small group of people. Some people I know put down the Folk community. They would prefer to listen to the blues in Haapsalu, or operas in Kuressaare.
It’s not their thing.
When you are inside of this world, it slowly takes you over. Things start to seem larger, even legendary. As a writer, I am quite guilty of blowing almost every experience I have had out of proportion. Yet I must relate to you, as sincerely and as truly as possible, just how overwhelming the festival is. On Saturday, I hid out in the press room, munching on cherries and staring at the bookshelves while others scurried in and out on their way to see the Québécois act Le Diable à Cinq. From the corner, I heard someone talking about an interview with Kanal 2. All the people and sounds faded to the blurry margins. Everything was out of focus for a while. “There’s only so much information the mind can process,” a friend remarked. “So many faces, so much music.” I had been obliterated by accordions, drums, and bagpipes.
In the evenings, the Ait filled up with strangers. People huddled in shadowy corners, discussing things. Young men with facial hair and glasses, girls with interesting tattoos. It was as if they were all waiting for a train. Then Andre Maaker came in and I tried to help him with his guitars, only to realize that I was so tired that I was incapable of forming coherent sentences. I walked home in the glow of a waxing moon, with a head full of music, and a heart full of good feelings. I had, in time, become a part of this world and it had become a part of me and would stay. It reminded me of lines penned by the great American poet E.E. Cummings back in 1952. “I fear no fate, for you are my fate,” he wrote. “I want no world, for beautiful you are my world. You are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you.” The morning after the folk festival, as I wrote this, I felt that I at last understood him.
north! 