IT WAS ARRANGED that I would do some field work with another anthropologist from the initiative. We were dispatched to a viewing platform at night. From there, we would make observational notes about human behavioral patterns. I had never worked with this woman before. She had brown hair, glasses, and blue eyes. She was not exceptionally pretty but not unattractive either. The first thing she said when we got on the platform was, “We should just get this part out of the way.” With that, she inserted her hands under my shirt and into my trousers and began to feel around. It was as much an inspection as an introduction. At times, she squeezed me, but not too hard. I just lied back and let her explore me. It wasn’t unpleasant.
After work, I went to a nightclub where they were playing Prince. The cut was “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” off of 1983’s 1999. Igrayne was at the bar with some of her friends. She was wearing a loose, open blouse and her golden hair was pulled back in a braid. She was sipping some awful fruity drink, and her light eyes were funeral black from midnight romps with surly strangers, angst, anguish, hangovers, and other bloody nightclub stories. “I want to kiss you,” I told Igrayne. “But we’re just friends,” she said. “This is all just friendship. That’s all this is.” At that, I began to lick her neck in a very friendly, neutral way. “This is just friendship,” I told her. “We’re just friends.” It felt good to kiss Igrayne’s warm neck. My daughter of course happened to walk by at this moment, a little distressed by the whole scene. “Daughter,” I said. “Meet Igrayne, your new stepmother.” They stared at each other curiously, like furry forest animals.
I slipped out the back door.
The tiki bar was up on the jungle plateau outside the town. Only a single dirt path led up to it. It was built of jungle wood, and drew a certain kind of crowd, mostly Hells Angels and Satanists. It was dark when I finally got up there. At the bar, I ordered a drink that came in a coconut that had been carved to look like a human skull. I was standing at the bar when I noticed a familiar man coming my way through the dark. It was none other than Charlie Watts, the late drummer of the Rolling Stones. “But Charlie, you’re dead,” I said. “Not here, I’m not,” he answered. He was tan and his hair was still brown. He wore a t-shirt, jeans, and sandals. He said, “Would you mind holding my drink? I’ll be right back. Just need to do some things.”
“Sure, Charlie,” I said. There I stood at the tiki bar, holding Charlie Watts’ iced coffee. I stood there for a long time. I imagined he had gone to find a bush, or was having some words with the owner of the bar. But Mr. Watts never came back for his iced coffee. It was in a clear plastic cup with a straw, and the ice cubes were melting. They clinked around inside the brown liquid like shards of glass. It looked as if he had bought it at Starbucks. I waited and waited and walked around the tiki bar and called out into the jungle night, “Charlie! Charlie! What about the coffee?” But Mr. Charlie Watts never came back for his melting iced coffee.
SOMETIME IN THE BLEAK DEPTHS of the pandemic, I became aware of the arrival of some dark-haired, shadowy strangers in town, mysterious characters who would lurk at the margins of parties, or whose strumming of guitars might be overheard whenever I passed the room they were renting on Posti Street. The Chileans! The way people around me referred to them, it was as if a whole orchestra from Valparaíso had been shipwrecked on the shores of Lake Viljandi. In reality, there were just two: Tomás del Real and Javier Navarro. But they were important. They were part of something new: a little South American community in Viljandi.
Viljandi, despite its rather small size, has always hosted pocket-sized minority enclaves. One stretch of Pikk Street was once called “Jew Street,” because of the active Jewish community that dwelled there before the Soviets deported some and the Germans and their evil helpers murdered the rest. Viljandi’s Jews even had their own sauna and fire brigade. There are also stories about the Romani people, or mustlased, who once camped in the forests where the Metsakalmistu, or Forest Cemetery, is now located, and how the Romani women tried to convince Mayor Maramaa to buy them horses so that they could leave. As far as I know, there was never a Latin American community here, until the arrival of Tomás and Javier from Chile, and Pepi from Argentina, and Tito from Cuba, and Miguelito from Mexico too. Slowly, something new is coming into existence.
Of these Latin Viljandiers, musician Tomás del Real is perhaps among the better known. On August 26, he performed at the Pärimusmuusika Ait, or Folk Music Center, to celebrate the release of his latest album, Principios de Declaración. Del Real is no stranger to the iconic Ait. He even used to live in the cellar when he first arrived in Viljandi and got an artist’s residency.
“Downstairs is where my room used to be, and every time I go there, my heart skips a beat,” he says. “Next to it is the rehearsal room, and that also gets me emotional.” Tomás recalls staring at the stones in the wall, or looking out the windows of the Ait on winter days when everything about Estonia was new, and he would take long walks around the old castle ruins. “Every spot in the Ait contains memories,” he says. “Every time I perform in the Ait, I get nervous, because it matters to me.”
His own performance, in front of a mostly packed house, came off flawlessly. While the songs on the record have diverse origins, the quiet introspection of Viljandi life has seeped into all. He also structured his show in a unique way, with one half of the stage divided between a standing microphone, where he addressed the audience as would any singer songwriter, standing and at times, and discussing the political situation at home in Chile. On the other part of the stage, he had a “living room,” where he played his tunes just as if he was at home. Tomás says this is part of the duality of being a character and a witness to music being created. He adds that during the “living room” segment of his show, he for a time felt like he was home, which, for now at least, means Viljandi’s Old Town. He even has a composition on the record called “Viljandi.” Though he grew up so far away, he also says there are certain commonalities between Chileans and Estonians. The era of the military dictatorship in Chile officially ended in 1990, while Estonians restored their independence the following year.
Tomas del Real on stage in Viljandi on August 26. Photo by Kerttu Kruusla.
“We have both been oppressed and in difficult situations,” says Tomás. Because of that, he says, both cultures value friendships, because they have learned to rely on each other. “It’s the only way that people who have suffered for so long can function as a society,” Tomás says. He adds that Chileans have also learned to be tight-lipped like Estonians, for the same reasons.
Viljandi has also fostered a creative streak in Tomás, which is another reason why he has stayed here. At one point, he was writing one new song a day, some of which appeared on a record he cut with local musician Lee Taul last year, calling their duo Don’t Chase the Lizard. The rest of it populates the hypnotic tunes on his latest solo outing. But Tomás is not the only musician from South America in Viljandi these days. There is at least one other sudamericano.
He is the one known to all as “Pepi”.
Indeed José “Pepi” Prieto might, in some future almanac authored by local historian Heiki Raudla, be considered the pioneer Latin American in Viljandi. He was the first to explore it, the same way that explorer Juan Diaz de Solis once dropped anchor in what is now Argentina in 1516. A native of Buenos Aires, Pepi had almost anything one could dream of by his early twenties: a steady girlfriend, a band, a career. He was restless though, and decided to go abroad for a spell, where he worked as a programmer in Indonesia. A chance encounter with an Estonian woman there inspired him to come to the northern margins of Europe, just as it once inspired a young American journalist to do the same. It was a decade ago, and just a few days before Christmas. “I was told that it was -30 degrees, but I had no idea of how cold it actually was,” he says of this frosty arrival. Like any true South American, he showed up in Estonia in December wearing shorts. “We went straight to the shop after that to buy a good coat and boots,” he says.
Then he came to Viljandi. Immediately, it struck him as a quiet, inspiring place, where his creativity for unknown reasons began to surge in the same way that it would for Tomás later. For years, Pepi kept a room in the Koit Seltsimaja, or Koit Society House, on the corner of Koidu and Jakobsoni Streets that once housed the Ugala Theatre from the 1920s until the 1980s.
For a time he even managed a creative space there, called the Sama Sama Studios.
“I started to feel like I was the guardian of that house,” says Pepi. “I was the person bringing people to the house, and always showing people the rooms.” It also inspired him to write new music, to invite people to collaborate on music and to perform.
Araukaaria, as seen through the gates of the Koit Society House. Pepi Prieto, Lee Taul, Johannes Eriste, Fedor Bezrukov, and Norbert De Varrene. Photo by Paul Meiesaar.
These days, Pepi performs with Araukaaria, a quintet that also features Lee Taul on violin and vocals, as well as percussionist Johannes Eriste, a guitarist called Norbert De Varrene, and a bassist from Narva named Fedor Bezrukov. The band’s music is informed by South American psychedelia from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as Estonian folk. They have an earnest but passionate sound. The band named itself after the sacred tree of the indigenous Mapuche people of Chile and Argentina, and araucano is a Spanish name for the Mapuches. “I grew up seeing these trees,” says Pepi, whose father was Chilean. “They have always been in my life.” Pepi sees other kinds of trees these days though. Birches, pines, and alders. He loads them into his wood-heated furnace. He also has a summer place outside town where he is raising cucumbers and potatoes with his Estonian family.
That’s right, Pepi, like myself, has contributed to population growth in the Republic of Estonia. He can now be seen walking a small blonde child down the street and speaking Spanish to her. Sometimes his friend Leandro, another programmer from Argentina whom he enticed to Estonia, tags along. Leandro is also a regular in town, but has opted to live in Tallinn full time. When I see both of them, I have to look twice. Latin Americans in Viljandi? How did it even happen?
“They are not like stereotypical South Americans, because they enjoy winter and silence, so in that sense they are in the right place,” says Lee Taul, who collaborates with Tomás and Pepi. “We are richer that they have come here, and they also know how to attract people with their energy,” she says, describing both del Real and Prieto as industrious, motivated musicians.
“They love nature too,” says Lee of her respective bandmates. “That is perhaps one reason they are here, because the forest is in the city,” she says. “For every true artist, nature provides a rich environment, a golden nest from which to hatch something new to life.”
Tomás for his part concurs with her assessment, calling the Estonians’ relationship with nature as “connected and profound.” “It’s absolutely true that I am more creative here because of the environment,” remarks Pepi. Here I would have to say they are correct, even if I am not a South American, or only in my heart. I am grateful for the arrival of these Southerners. Not only are they inspired by Viljandi, but they have inspired me. I agree with them, and wholeheartedly.
My notes from this year’s Viljandi Folk Music Festival, held 27-30 July 2023 in Viljandi, Estonia
THURSDAY, YESTERDAY, was the first day. Festivals are difficult to cover, because you cannot be in every place at every time. Concerts or events overlap, and so you just cannot see everything. Of the concerts I saw yesterday, my favorite was Mari Kalkun’s performance, which happened at Kaevumägi, or the Well Hill, one of the festival’s primary stages.
I have probably either known or known of Mari Kalkun for more than a decade. She is a popular folk singer, and specializes in songs sung in the South Estonian Võro dialect or language.
I think what makes Mari special as a performer is her ability to sustain intensity over what can be atmospheric and amorphous compositions. She plays with all of the foreboding of purple rain clouds in the distance. She comes in and leaves like a thick white fog. There is sunshine sometimes too.
Many folk artists can provide nonstop, horn-blaring, bass-drum-pounding, action-packed intensity, while others are capable of crafting beautiful lullaby-like landscapes. Those landscapes though will soon lull you to sleep, just as that intensity will wear you down quickly.
Rare is the artist who can sustain such intensity wrapped up in lush and haunting melodies, and across an entire set list.
For this performance, Mari was joined by Australian bassist Nathan Riki Thomson, and most of the material was off her latest album Stoonia Lood, released on Real World Records this year.
They also performed later in the evening at the Folk 30 concert which celebrated three decades of the Viljandi Folk Music Festival.
OTHER THOUGHTS OF FOLK
One thing I notice every year when I attend this festival is the lack of American performers. I think it might be because American folk music is popular music. When an American says “folk,” he thinks probably immediately of Bob Dylan. But Bob Dylan isn’t hurting for gigs and it would be hard to entice Bob to come on down to Viljandi to sing to us. There is also this issue of the American folk blues tradition. Estonia has a blues festival too. Should American traditional acts perform there instead?
“Folk” in Viljandi is blended with something called etno or “ethno.” It’s very fusion, and in line with the general philosophy of the Viljandi Culture Academy to make the old new again, or to build off of Estonian and other folk traditions. So “Folk” is not exactly “folk” as an American might understand folk to be. The Estonians have taken the English word “folk” and changed the meaning slightly. The Estonian word is pärimus, which means something more like original or traditional. There are always different ways to translate English words into Estonian, but the meanings are not always exactly equivalent.
I like the size of this festival. It’s very cozy, and I am glad it has not become a Coachella, Glastonbury, Roskilde-like event. It’s a social gathering. Old friends get together. It is distinctly for the locals, and in that way, its reach is limited. Combining international artists with this Estonian content must be a challenge.
For example, the opening ceremony was entirely in the Estonian language, as it should be, but I found myself wondering how an outsider might see it. I am not arguing that there should be simultaneous translations or anything like that, but this is a niche festival. At the same time, people who have visited just for one festival have often returned for the unique vibe. It has that effect on visitors.
OF LEIK, ANDRE MAAKER, AND BUBBLES
Leik is a duo consisting of Kelly Veinberg and Elina Kasesalu who (mostly) sing and play violin, but also add viola and the special hiiu kannel.
I have seen Elina and Kelly a lot in Viljandi, and on trains to Viljandi, and from Viljandi, and also once in a shopping center in Tartu. And probably other places, toting their instruments.
Andre Maaker is a guitarist. I could call him a virtuoso, but he’s not really, and I could call him a guitar slinger, but really, he’s just a guitarist. He’s the kind of guy who sleeps next to his guitar, “just in case he gets a good idea.” He loves guitars, and based on the set they played yesterday at Käevumägi, he has a whole toy shop full of stringed instruments at home, such as the acoustic “world stick” he pulled out of nowhere, or the four-stringed tenor guitar. He filled out Leik’s sonics best with a 12-string acoustic, which has that lovely, dulcimer-like ring to it, and has always been used in folk music, as he noted to me afterward (yes, it has, and should be used more often).
According to Leik, the addition of Maaker has allowed them more room to focus on their vocals and instruments, as in the past, they often had to work to fill out the depth of the pieces. With that guitar, there’s just more sound.
Andre used to teach Kelly and Elina, and they asked him to partner on this project, which has seen them recently tour the islands. Much of their repertoire includes songs from Saaremaa, Hiiumaa, and Vormsi, as well as some self-penned compositions, and they carried them all well. There’s something wonderful about the blend of voice and strings here that continued to ring in memory for hours.
According to the musicians themselves, they were well received in the islands and were again yesterday.
This was probably the best concert I saw yesterday. It provided some sorely needed introspection during a festival that can get tiring quickly, with all the people, music, food, and conversations.
FRIDAY
Friday raised the question, is it possible to overdose on bagpipe music? According to radio journalist Arp Müller, who was diligently assembling his kit in the press room, it’s possible to overdose on anything.
Cätlin Mägi and the VKA bagpipers begged this question with their afternoon performance. At best, the bagpipe evoked misty landscapes and ancient moods. It has a kind of cleansing quality to it. At worst, it can sound like a flock of angry ducks. According to a German folk journalist (yes, they really exist), Estonian bagpipes are unique, as is the Estonian bagpipe tradition. He came all the way up from Scholzland to write about it.
He also noted that the Folk audience is unique, in that it is concentrated among younger people. In other countries, its an older person’s genre. Even the musicians of Trad.Attack!, Jalmar, Sandra, and the incredible percussionist Tubli, are in their mid-to-late 30s and considered old hands.
Trad.Attack! puts on a mobbed, flashy, wall-of-sound show. Unfortunately for an outsider, a lot of the runo song-based melodies are lost on someone who isn’t from here.
I will add here, that I did not witness one drunken brawl or act of violence yesterday. Folk does not invite the quasi-white nationalist biker crowd to brawl over grilled meat, beer, and heavy metal. They are somewhere else. One feels safer here.
The last concert I saw last night was Tintura, which is really one of the weirdest groups out there. They offered up a contrabass, violin, keyboards and electric guitar, turntables, and then, of course, a blazing saxophone solo. This was funk, folk, electronica, and wedding band fusion. Or as a friend put it, “kompott,” a jam.
PS. I am also proud to report that I survived an entire Irish folk music concert given by Flook yesterday, though I initially doubted in my fortitude. After a few numbers though, I actually started to like it. One might say that it’s an acquired taste.
SATURDAY
SATURDAY. Let me choose my words carefully. On Friday night, someone I know started drinking. On Saturday, he was still drinking. If you are reading this, you probably think you know this person, but the fact is, it applies to multiple people at this festival. They may still be out there drinking, somewhere.
Music. It is impossible to see all of the concerts. You must choose. Often, the choice is not yours. The line for the Kaisa Kuslapuu Trio was out the door. Supposedly, I missed a great concert, but I couldn’t attend it. Instead I saw Svjata Vatra and Rute Trochynskyi and also Julia Kozakova, which is a Romani act from Slovakia. You really have to appreciate Svjata Vatra (one of these photos is of the crowd at the concert). Ruslan is just so funky, and his daughter is brave and can sing. I told my daughter that next year we should perform just like Ruslan and Rute, but she was not amused.
Other interesting finds were Le Diable à Cinq, a furiously intense Quebecois band, and Rahu the Fool, from Latvia. I have this bias against Latvians from living here. It’s as if we ignore them, because they are so close, sort of the way that New Yorkers ignore the Quebecois. “Oh, right, them. They’re over there.” This group was fun. They even played “Mack the Knife.” People want to be entertained, you know. You can be the best accordionist in the world, but if you can’t entertain people, then so what. Latvians do seem a shade darker than Estonians, and about 1000 percent livelier. I think I had written once about a lost Roman legion that had settled the banks of the Daugava. This performance reminded me of that myth.
At some moment yesterday, I became overcome by exhaustion. I could barely walk, really, and just sort of stood against a tree reading the obits for Sinead O’Connor on my phone. I disappeared into the press office, where I ate most of the cherries and zoned out and dreamed of certain things. There were too many people, and there was too much going on. It’s enough to drive a man to drink.
VÄGILASED
So, this was Vägilased on Saturday night. The Estonian word “vägi” means something like “force,” “might,” or “energy.” Perhaps Vägilased could be called “the mighty ones.”
This is one of the old guard bands that used to play the festival many years ago but reunited for this year’s concert. It consists of Meelika Hainsoo on violin and vocals, Reigo Ahven on drums, Cätlin Mägi, who also sings and plays bagpipes and the jaw harp, Jan Viileberg on guitars, and Marti Tärn on bass. They were joined by Andre Maaker on guitars, Leik’s Kelly Veinberg and Elina Kasesalu on violins and vocals, and Francois Archango on percussion. They were also joined by graybearded Aapo Ilves playing a wolf (although my daughter said he looks like Jesus), Toomas Valk on karmoška, Kristjan Priks, an emcee named Päär Pärenson, and a whole school of percussionists.
This concert started at 21.30, and I was already tired. The long, flowing dresses of the performers reminded me of night gowns, so I came to think of the Vägilased concert as a sort of pajama party. Of course Meelika is a captivating singer (she is so soulful and sincere, commented Lauri Räpp), but I was also impressed by the outstanding bounce of the rhythm session. Whoever did the sound for the concert deserves credit. It was balanced, light, and funky.
Also, just when you thought this concert was over, it wasn’t. There was another song, and another. The concert ended with the vast audience holding hands and singing the chorus to one of the songs.
Like most Estonian folk acts, this one relies on traditional runo song structures as a foundational element, but there’s a subtle reggae influence to the way the compositions are performed. I was just very happy when it was all over, and the yellow moon was waxing watchfully in the sky, soon to reach its most potent and illimitable size and shape.
Apparently, this was a one-off concert, and there won’t be anymore Vägilased for some time to come. If you were there last night though, you were there. Easily one of the best concerts I have been to in recent years. There is an emotional depth here that is lacking in a lot of other groups. Vägilased make you feel things.
SUNDAY
Technically, Sunday began at the stroke of midnight, meaning that this photo taken of Untsakad performing was made around that time.
As a person without roots here, all of these indigenous rhythms are at times lost on me. As a friend recounted, once an Estonian hears them, something goes off in his brain, and he starts to dance. The Estonian can be anywhere, cutting the grass for example, but after hearing a few bars of an Untsakad song, he will go into a trance and start to dance a jig.
Sunday morning started off with sunshine, but halfway through the day, it began to rain and never stopped. I saw the Quebecois again, and the Slovakian act again. There was also some atonal folk music from the Middle East performed by a cat called El Khat.
I don’t really remember what else I did or saw, just a lot of truncated conversations. It seems like Folk is one big therapy session, where people confide in each other about their relationship problems, or seek out advice from others. Women advise bold gestures of love. The men in the know say you must remain aloof. “It drives them crazy. They will chase you for years!” I will only comment that it is interesting to have nearly every love interest you have had in a seven-year timespan confined into a small area patrolled by security and catered by mobile kebab vendors.
All of the bands are different. Some are more purist at heart. Julia Kozakova’s group made me feel as if I was at a traditional Roma wedding. Zetod are traditional fusion supreme, mixing in rock, funk and reggae, and basically everything else.
We should probably talk about Jalmar Vabarna too. Years ago, he was just this earnest folk music kid, but now, I can barely get near him because he has a little entourage of Seto bodyguards around him and wears sunglasses at almost all times. Well, not completely true, because the last time I saw him, he was handing out strawberries at a high school graduation in Setomaa. He is most himself on stage, I think. I have never seen him more natural, more happy, than on a rainy stage at midnight. When you see him perform, as he did closing out this year’s festival, you get the true Jalmar.
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.
I WANT TO TELL YOU about my friend Tomás del Real. Today is his 30th birthday and he will celebrate it here in Viljandi, Estonia, which is the small, spacious and at times inspiring Estonian town we both happen to live in.
Tomás also has a new album out called Principios de Declaración. It is inarguably his most achieved and most mature work as a songwriter to date. His first two records, Tomando Forma(2014) and Tiempo (2017) featured bands, but over his past few records, Sembrar de Nuevo (2020) and Huracán (2022) with the folk music group Don’t Chase the Lizard, has has become a devotee of the guitar and opted for a sparser, stripped back, minimalistic sound.
The 13 compositions on Principios de Declaración are therefore built on his voice and guitar, with some light additional instrumentation added to fill out the atmospherics. He claims it is the perfect midnight record, but it also has the sound of a new morning to it, or even a late-afternoon stroll. It is a beautiful work of art created in a beautiful place. The melodies are earnest, haunting, and they stay with you.
Tomás chalks up the changes in songcraft to living in a small northern town, where one feels a stirring kind of isolation. Viljandi does attract its share of musicians, poets, writers, artists, and other outside thinkers for this very reason. He arrived during the pandemic, leaving behind political uncertainty and upheaval in his native Chile, and seeking out something fresh and new. Like a lot of artists from the New World, he has found inspiration in the Old World. They call it reverse emigration.
“The way I communicate with people now is different,” Tomás says of how the Estonian environment changed him. “The pauses, the space, the connection with nature, every part of Estonian culture and what I have been living during these years has got into my songwriting.” It is no wonder then that the songs on his new album have titles like “Los Momentos”, “Silente,” “Pausar”, and, of course “Viljandi.”
Kerttu Kruusla, a Viljandi-associated photographer and visual artist also provided the memorable artwork for the record. “She is a close friend of mine, I trust her,” Tomás says. “I knew she was someone who would be emotionally involved during the process.”
Being in front of non-Spanish speaking audiences also allowed him to let his hair down, so to speak. He felt less pressured to deliver topical lyrics intended to wow and impress audiences. “I could be super honest with myself and not filter anything that I need to share in the shape of a song,” he says of this phenomenon. In the past he might have avoided some things, but in an international context, there is no need to avoid anything he feels. That, some might argue, is actually the perfect environment in which to create anything of significance.
You really have to appreciate the work ethic that Tomás del Real has. After putting out and touring Huracán last year with creative partner Lee Taul, one might have expected a pause or a vacation. Instead he came up with 13 new compositions which, honestly, rank among his best, or most developed songs. Some personal favorites on Principios de Declaración are the gorgeous “Canción de Huída” in which he trades vocals with Darla Eno, a British singer he met 10 years ago.
“We were both very young and we met somewhere in Scotland,” del Real says of the collaboration. “During that period, some of the Edinburgh folk people would do singing circles and singing sessions, where everybody would learn some folk songs and sing along. Everything in Europe seemed so new and exciting to me, so I was listening very carefully.”
The foundation of “Canción de Huída” is actually a verse that Eno shared with him from an old folk standard called “The Butcher Boy” (check out Irish legends The Clancy Brothers performing the same tune in 1965). He said the chorus was so “nostalgic and profound” that he had to remake it in his own way.
“I basically wrote a song around it so I could sing the song as well,” said del Real.
Eno isn’t the only collaborator on Principios de Declaración. He also partnered with Chilean musician Javier Barría, who duets with him on the song “Acantilado,” and the album was mastered by Chilean sound engineer Jorge Fortune in Chilean Patagonia.
A personal favorite song of mine on the record is “Las Campanas,” which means “the bells.” Tomás said this particular tune developed out of a sense of isolation and anxiety about the world during the pandemic. “I was in a very dark place, and even music wasn’t flowing,” he says of this time. To survive, he indulged in classic 1960s and 1970s folk singers, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Leonard Cohen, and Paul Simon among them.
“I just needed something to give me a little bit of light,” he says. The concept underlying the song is that no matter the pressures of the day, there will always be tomorrow, and the bells will once again ring.
And then there is “Los Momentos,” which is the sparse and hypnotic debut single from the album, and at the beginning of which one can hear del Real striking a match to start a fire.
“This was one of the last songs I wrote that made it to the album,” he says. “After processing all that happened, and the songs I wrote along the way, I was exhausted, and found myself sitting by the fire, contemplating what I had been through.”
Most of the songs on Principios de Declaración were written during the long and introspective Estonian winter, and so the imagery of fire as a cleansing phenomenon that does away with the past after a long journey is at the front of “Los Momentos.”
“You summon the fire to clean it all out, and finish the trip the same way, making the album a very cyclical trip in my opinion,” says del Real. The guitar lines in the tune helped to ground him after many adventures. “I just wanted to explore that feeling of being grounded and just being.”
There is also the album title. Tomás says that he decided to call his new record Principios de Declaración for a variety of reasons. He sees it as a sort of personal constitution, one that communicates his principles, the fundamentals of what he wants to share with the world. “It reminds me of Blue by Joni Mitchell,” he says. “The way she says, ‘If I am going to do this as a living, then there will be no more disguises or costumes. This is it.'”
But the Spanish word principios can also means “beginnings” in this context. So these songs are merely the start of his declaration. That means, hopefully, there will be much more music to come.
AFTER SONJA STOLE my lost book of erotica, she continued her music studies, later becoming a rather impressive jazz singer and all around chanteuse. She gave concerts on the top of the tallest hotel in Tallinn, which is not that tall, but still pretty tall. From there, on summer evenings, one could feel the brisk winds of the north and stare off into a Matisse swirl of stars and purple orange sunset fused into a stellar blue stardust trail of Baltic melancholy. It was pretty, in other words, and she was beautiful. She played with a little Finnish trio. They were not as beautiful as blonde Sonja was, but they played beautifully. There was a drum solo.
I started attending the rooftop jazz concerts around the time I returned from America, where I had to visit family with Jane and her new lover Hans, the Dutch screenwriter. They got to stay in the guest bedroom while I was there, and, well, I had no place to sleep. To make matters worse, nobody could understand why this fact bothered me. “Why are you so moody? You again with your moods! You should go see a psychologist! You seem to have a lot of issues.” Hans and her shacked up in my parents house, and I went and slept in the guesthouse. Agnetha was there, with her young daughter, and I gave them my bed. I curled up to sleep beside them on the hard floor. It was uncomfortable and I went back to Europe after that.
That was how I stumbled upon Sonja and the hotel concerts. She was a good singer. Usually this kind of elevator jazz bores me, but hers was a more ambrosial blend. But jazz alone doesn’t pay the bills, does it. Sonja was also working as a waitress at the hotel bar. At breakfast, she brought me a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. In Islam, orange juice is a rich and promising symbol. If you are poor, you will become rich if you drink enough orange juice. If your heart is broken and you have suffered many hardships, your pain will be relieved by the tang of this tropical nectar. I don’t think Sonja knew this though. She just needed the money. Then she walked over to the elevator and took it back up to the roof for some rooftop jazz.
SOME (MUCH YOUNGER) PERSON here has put together a circa 1999 playlist at the café where I write. And so I am revisited by “How Bizarre” by OMC, “MMMBop” by Hanson, “You Get What You Give” by The New Radicals, and “Brimful of Asha” by Cornershop. Basically, what was playing in the music store where I worked in ’97 – ’99. We marked up those one-hit-wonder compact discs something mighty. I think OMC’s disc was selling for something ridiculous like $17.99. If it was really in demand, like KORN (but with a backwards R) it might be $18.99. The dream was that some local oligarch would walk in on Friday night half-drunk on whatever, stinking of cigar smoke, and buy out the whole lot. We sold a lot of that Elton John remake of “Candle in the Wind” after Princess Diana died, and, of course, all of the Notorious BIG and Tupac posthumous releases (DMX has now joined them). Hip hop was really gory then. I remember DMX’s album was called Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood. This was not Run-DMC or Public Enemy.
As I see it, the late ’90s were a time when pop music was just a bit more open to new sounds than it had been throughout the ’80s. I wasn’t around in the ’70s — well, for a few weeks — but ’80s pop was less DIY. Everything from Duran Duran to Bananarama to New Order and Depeche Mode seemed so overproduced, and most of the post-glam rock was the same. Even their hair was overproduced. It was the era of overproduction. The idea of some guy making songs in his basement and becoming a big star didn’t really happen until Nirvana broke down the gates, and all of those “alternative” acts came flooding in. Beck arrived with “Loser,” and it actually got played on the radio. That didn’t happen in 1989. In 1989, we had Phil Collins and Billy Joel, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Cher and Rick Astley.
There was no “Loser.”
But afterward, you saw these pop groups start to bubble to the surface, and they brought with them guitar-driven, self-composed songs. Hanson were three brothers from Oklahoma. New Radicals was really one person, who wrote and produced all the material. Cornershop was an actual band, with a riff-driven pop song that vaguely resembled some of the material that came out in the very distant halcyon days of the late 1960s. Even Smash Mouth arrived and dared to do a farfisa solo on a record, and it sold amazingly well. They covered The Monkees (!) The doors were again open. You could basically do anything, and if you got lucky, you could be a success.
The late ’90s were a very funny time, I think, in retrospect. The music was ridiculous. The adoration and obsession with celebrities was overboard. The movies — Rushmore, Election, Eyes Wide Shut, Fight Club — were only getting better and more prescient. And there were all of these teenagers growing up, just a few years younger than me, who seemed much more potent as a collective force. You saw them on these shows like Total Request Live hosted by Carson Daly. It seemed like there were just billions of teenagers all of a sudden eager to buy Backstreet Boys and Eminem records. It was like Baby Boomers, Part II.
I remember talking to one kid at the music store who tried to convince me that Third Eye Blind were the second coming of the Beatles. This was in 1997, so he was maybe 14 or 15. I thought, “Are you joking?!” But he was dead serious. He was walking around with an acoustic guitar slung on his back and claimed to know how to play all of their songs.
PS. I was working with Max, a hippie traveler John Coltrane devotee who was 10 years older than me, in the shop, and we used to joke that Hanson was actually like the 1990s version of the Beatles. Max hit upon the idea that we should slip some LSD into Hanson’s fruit juice, and that they would subsequently produce the 1990s version of Sgt. Pepper’s. We schemed to produce tie-dye t-shirts showing Hanson swimming in trippy psychedelic colors with the slogan, “Dose Hanson.”
It happened like this: I was walking back from the supermarket in the evening, which for Estonia in early November is actually late afternoon. The temperature was about 39 degrees Fahrenheit, 4 degrees Celsius. The weather was, more or less, miserable. A faint mist, a faint fog, some sluggish traffic. I crossed the intersection, came up by the other shopping center and past the apothecary and looked into the windows there, and saw my own reflection.
I could see my German officer’s jacket and the flat cap I bought at H&M, the one that makes me look like my grandfather. But for a split second, I saw 1995-era Hackett there, vintage Brendan. When he had that weird in-between yellow afro, not long, not short, and would gesture with one hand, as with a pipe, and talking out of the corner of his mouth about things, as if he actually knew things. Hackett’s always was a deeply philosophical soul. He liked to listen to Robert Johnson.
What also struck me was how alike we still were. We were both then and now terrifying. Was there anyone in our class who hadn’t turned out terrifying? Denzler was inarguably terrifying, but then there was Cover, who was an entire other class of terror. DeVerna, the attorney, had aged into respectability, but he was certainly still terrifying deep down, and Grande, as good-natured and friendly as he was, no doubt hid some kind of dark side. He moved to Maryland. Nobody who moves to Maryland lacks a dark side. Then there was Hackett, gesturing with his hand, his shoelaces always untied. Why were the shoelaces untied? He tied them, but they came undone.
***
I had never listened to his EP, Just Not Today by The Bern Band. I had promised him that I would. Somehow, I never got around to it. You know how you buy a book and intend to read it, but you never do? That’s what happened with Hackett’s EP. So in homage to this spectre of young Hackett, I decided to give it a listen. The time had arrived.
The first thing I can say is that the guitars are plump. This guy knows his guitars. He is painting this masterpiece with guitar. There are bold, emotive, Picasso-like strokes. Spiralling earworm blackhole cosmic grooves and fills. Vintage 1995 Hackett could not play like this with his crappy Ibanez with the Grateful Dead sticker on the smashed-up part. We played covers of the first-year guitar player canon, such as “Sunshine of Your Love” and “White Room,” “Pinball Wizard” and that’s really about it. Hackett was not actually a wunderkind, prodigy kind of guitar player. I met plenty of musicians who could outdo anyone when they were 14 years old, but he was more of a disciplined devotee of the instrument. He worked on it every night. He rehearsed. And, over time, he got really good. Hackett was also an incredible listener. Hackett listened to people. He had a lot of empathy. He applied this empathetic ear of his to the craft of music. He listened to songs the way a bank robber might put his ear up to a lock, waiting for that tell-tale click.
This record has plenty of classic rock influences all over it. What I think is great about it is that you can’t really tell where it all came from though. It’s almost like that classic William S. Burroughs “cut up method,” except The Bern Band did this to classic rock radio. The Beatles mixed with Led Zeppelin crossed with maybe some Grand Funk Railroad and Thin Lizzy and The Jam? Am I leaving anyone out?
I just can’t figure this one out. Where did this all come from? He’s also honed his vocal delivery into I don’t know what. Some kind of Robert Plant meets Steve Miller meets the Eagles? Who the hell are you, man? Hackett has become a rock and roll shapeshifter.
The other piece of The Bern Band, the Bruce Foxton to Hackett’s Paul Weller, is Dave Trump, who is also an old high school friend, yet not terrifying in the least. He plays bass on this record and apparently contributed 100% to the project. He is clearly an old pro on the instrument. My favorite stretch is on the track “Midnight Run,” where Trump cranks out beautiful, melodic basslines that will remind any player of why they first fell in love with this understated but incredibly fundamental instrument. The drummer, whoever he is, is also good.
***
Years ago, I almost connected with Hackett in Stockholm. I had an afternoon to kill while I waited for the ship back to Tallinn, and he was there with wife and baby. But they were on a boat somewhere out in the archipelago. I told him though about a great music shop near Slussen, where they sold vintage guitars and basses, including a Rickenbacker I like to visit and gaze at, and the next day Hackett went down there, sized up the same Ric, and bought some t-shirts. So if we play our cards right, we might all wind up back in the music shop in Stockholm one of these days. Until then, old friend, many rocking riffs.
Don’t Chase the Lizard’s Lee Taul and Tomás del Real, photo by Annika Vihmann
EVERY OTHER DAY I catch sight of Tomás del Real leaving the house on Posti Street. It’s a sprawling, timber, 19th century structure across from the courthouse, and the South Americans have settled into the apartment at the far end. In the evenings, I can hear them singing through the windows. Sometimes I peek through to watch them play. I am not sure if Tomás is actually living in the house or visiting. Del Real turned up in town with his guitar and some other Chileans maybe a year ago. Suddenly, there were these dark-haired musicians milling about, the kinds of nomads who carry the winds of Los Andes with them wherever they may venture.
Del Real was one of them. He’s got thick hair, a scruffy beard. He likes to wear sunglasses. I know almost nothing else about him, other than that he is one half of Don’t Chase the Lizard.
The other half of this indie folk duo is the Estonian violinist and vocalist Lee Taul. I see her around town too. Usually she is either coming from rehearsal or going to rehearsal or getting coffee while taking a break from rehearsal. Sometimes she prickles with electric enthusiasm. Sometimes she is frustrated with the slow pace of a project. Sometimes it is raining and she is taciturn. Sometimes it is sunny and she looks more vibrant and Latin than Tomás the Chilean. Sometimes she has been rehearsing with her fiddle all day and yet no new ideas have arrived. Sometimes Lee has a really brilliant idea.
Taul and del Real met at some kind of musical camp or event years ago somewhere in Europe. When del Real found himself in Viljandi, a town of about 20,000 people steeped in culture that serves as a kind of Glastonbury or Roskilde for this Northern European country, they reconnected. Del Real had just washed up on Estonian shores after leading a peripatetic existence that took him from Chile to México to the US, then back to Chile before embarking for Europe.
“I spent a year without performing and filling myself up with anxiety, not being able to develop much as a person,” he says of this time, which coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic. “I decided that I needed to explore other possibilities, so I moved to Europe with one of my friends.”
During this period, they decided to reach out to old friends they had made at ethno music camps, including from Estonia, which del Real had visited years ago. “I had good memories of Estonia from my past, so we decided to hang out here,” he says. “I connected deeply with the place, the culture, the people and the nature, so that week turned into a year, and here we are now.”
Del Real also got a residency at the Pärimusmuusika Ait, or Estonian Folk Music Center, a converted manorhouse barn that serves as the hub for folk music. It was here that he and Taul began to compose the songs that feature on Don’t Chase the Lizard’s debut album Huracán.
ESTONIAN WINTERS ARE WEIRD. Anyone who has ever lived through one can tell you that. From about November through April, the ground is covered in snow and ice. Sometimes it melts a little, only to be reinforced by double the amount of white cold. Days dawn and end with sheets of the sticky stuff falling all around. Time doesn’t stand still during an Estonian winter. There is no time. In a way, the hypnotic character of the Estonian snowfall found its way into Don’t Chase the Lizard’s songs. It is this strange yet appealing overlap between northern natural elements and Latin rhythms that colors the group’s music, like João Gilberto mixed with a little Hedningarna.
Del Real wrote most of the songs early in the morning. There was an almost monastic quality to the composition process, steeped in solitude and peace. He would wake, work, and send his ideas to Taul, and the two would build on them. “I was the winter resident at the Ait, so we started to work while being very much in isolation from the world,” says del Real. Because of pandemic restrictions, there wasn’t much activity at the Ait, which is located adjacent to the ruins of 13th century castle and a wooded lakeside landscape. With few visitors, they were especially isolated.
“All the tracks from the album come from that experience,” says del Real, “being in our little bubble and around nature.”
Within two months, they had an album’s worth of material. “Huracán” was the first song written for what would become the group’s debut album. “It was very early in the morning and I couldn’t sleep so it was almost like having a conversation with your subconscious,” he says of the song. “Lobos” was the last composition. By the time it was written, the duo had started to play live.
Don’t Chase the Lizard performing, photo by Ako Lehtmets
THE GROUP’S FIRST CONCERT took place in the Ait itself in February and by March, they had released their first single, “Buscar la Luz.” The single has a soothing, undulating quality, held together by del Real’s splendid guitar work and the droning quality of Taul’s violin, which adds color and depth to the melody, topped off with sincere lyrics and beautiful harmonies.
The duo appeared on several Estonian radio programs in the early spring before making their Tallinn debut at Philly Joe’s in May. From there, they flew over the ocean to take part in Folk Alliance International, where they had an official showcase in Kansas City in May and performed at the Kansas City Folk Festival. Once back in Estonia, they played the Seto Folk Festival in July and opened for Rita Ray in Tallinn the same month. They are also scheduled to play at the Ait’s Harvest Party concert this coming October.
In the meantime, Don’t Chase the Lizard racked up more than 30,000 streams on digital platforms with its singles “Huracán” and “8,” incidentally the eighth track on the album, which was released in July. “8” features more intricate guitar work, with a hushed, almost prayer-like quality to the vocals. The violin work takes its time, no note is wasted, every tone is supple and adds to the sound. Credit is due to Kaur Einasto, who recorded the album in Viljandi, as well as to Jorge Fortune, who edited, mixed, and mastered it at Estudios Triana in Patagonia, Chile.
According to Taul, the concerts have gone quite well, and the crowd’s positive feedback has surprised the duo. “I don’t know if it’s the fact that the folk audience is used to a different kind of music, and ours has had a refreshing effect, or that the songs, mainly in Spanish, give the program a special flavor,” she says. “In any case, we have been satisfied with the results.” Taul notes that audiences in the US received the group warmly and that the group made new contacts. “We met amazing musicians, producers, and agents,” says Taul. “We can only hope that some future cooperation will come out of those interactions in the future,” she says.
“I think people have been reacting very well to the live performances,” agrees del Real. “It seems that people connect with feelings and sounds that seem genuine to them,” he says. People have particularly been intrigued by the combination of Chilean and Estonian sounds. “It’s attractive to see how two people from opposite regions of the world have a sound that might fit together very well and become something quite unique,” he says.
GOOD ALBUMS are likethe best novels, of course. They have a way of effortlessly reaching you on their own time. Someone might give you a book and urge you to read it, but you put it aside until one day, out of boredom, you pick it up and devour it all at once in a few hours. Likewise, someone might give you an album and ask you to listen to it, but it might take time for the right moment for listening to arrive. In my case, it was a Sunday morning in August when Huracán presented itself to me. The sun was already shining, I was about to take a shower and go to the cafe to get some coffee. Many of the big milestones of the summer, such as the annual Viljandi Folk Music Festival, had passed. I myself was in a calm morning contemplative mood.
Each song on Huracán is a treasure to be savored in its own way, unwrapped slowly and delicately. The voices reach out to you. While well produced, it’s a bare bones recording yet with stirring atmospherics. It sounds like it was recorded in an old church in the Andean Mountains. There is del Real’s guitar and Taul’s fiddle, plus their exceptional voices, del Real’s intimate delivery and Taul’s intuitive and sensitive harmonies. There are no electronics gurgling in the background. There are no distractions. It’s as if they are right there with you playing in the room.
I will always recall that moment of putting on those songs and letting them play. They seemed like the best way to start a quiet Sunday morning in the first week of August. It was kind of funny as well. This music, written in isolation in the winter, somehow made sense in summer. Huracán, the ultimate winter album, had unwittingly become the ultimate summer album too.
north! 