AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. I had the good luck to see the guitarist Stuart Ironside perform at the Pärimusmuusika Ait in Viljandi, Estonia, at the very end of November. This is the one song that I took home with me, or the one that wouldn’t leave me alone. There it was, watching me. It was hovering and flitting around me like …
… like a bat in a tree.
Ironside — yes, that’s his real name — is originally from Oxford and came up playing classical music, Oasis, and Radiohead like a loyal Briton. But he’s since ventured into something that might be called “minimalist ambient meditative guitar.” In particular, he’s drawn, especially in Estonia, to being in the presence of and reacting to nature. He goes out into the woods with his instrument and listens to the trees talk and he talks back at them with his strings. There’s an almost monastic devotion to this experiment, as he communes in his sensitive, musical way. As such, the forest sounds on this recording, available on his new record Music from Somewhere Else: The Enclosure, were recorded in Vääna-Jõesuu, a beachside village to the west of Tallinn. Ironside recorded “The Bat is in the Tree” and other songs in a sauna there. This is not music designed to sound like something. It is that something, captured in the raw.
Ironside made a first attempt at the song in London in 2023. “I had the main riff at the start of the song for a few months, but didn’t know where it would go,” he recalls. “I refined it over a few years and live performances, with an emphasis on trying to ring as much emotion out of as few notes as possible.” Ironside also tried to emulate West African lutes like the xalam and koni for “The Bat is in the Tree,” but also drew upon both British and Estonian folk. The result is a satisfying and pretty listening experience. This is the kind of music you listen to at the start or end of the days, when you put your legs up on the bed, breathe out, stare at the ceiling and close your eyes, trying, perhaps in vain, to forget the tiring agony of the world.
THE SCENE, an industrial area, a dump, maybe both. Rory Lapp, the acclaimed Estonian writer and poet drives in first, then I follow him, our automobiles follow a set course. It’s almost like we’re rally racing. Yet there are no competitive drivers, just rusting manufacturing waste that brings to mind a mineral processing plant. At some point, Rory leaves his vehicle with a sort of industrial plant valet and I do the same. Then we head into an old building, vast and obviously post-war, with a peeling façade. It’s an auditorium. Light wooden floors. Burgundy curtains.
Inside, everything has been renovated. I can see that we’re in something like a basketball court set up for a party. This is one of those multipurpose halls. There are long tables on both sides, and on stage, an unfamiliar hip hop trio is performing. They are pacing with microphones, trading rhymes, and a DJ spins records in the corner, cutting back and forth. At the head of the tables, I see a familiar-looking man, clean shaven, with a full head of wavy hair. He wears a red button down shirt, open at the top, and looks somehow lost in thought or just unimpressed.
“Who is that?” I ask from one of the partygoers, who is loading his plate from a bowl of potato salad. “He looks just like …” “That’s MCA,” the partygoer responds. “Today is his 61st birthday. Weren’t you invited?” “I guess so,” I say. Now I can see that MCA, also known as Adam Yauch, also known as Nathaniel Hornblower, is at the gifts table, and guests are hovering around him as he unties every last big package. I look down and see I have a gift bag in hand too. It’s full of my own books. “Yauch loved Minu Viljandi,” somebody says. “He’s a great fan of your work.” “He is?” I answer. “I have to say, he looks great for 61,” someone says. “Sixty-one?” another answers. “And I thought he was dead!” “Isn’t he though?” I ask them. But nobody answers.
Slowly I make my way to the busy gift table. MCA is seated there. He still looks like he’s part alien or something. Did the Beastie Boys really smoke so much dope back in the day? Or was it all that Tibetan Buddhism that did that to him? MCA is functioning on some other plane of consciousness. He’s floating around in the Third Bardo. I am afraid to even say hi to him. He’s a big superstar, one of the greatest emcees ever. I’m just … But how did MCA even find out about me? MCA looks up as I hand over my gift. He nods in his good-natured, all knowing way. Kind, sympathetic, brotherly. The man looks as if he’s about to speak. MCA looks up and says …
I HAVE DECIDED to create a new series that I call New Track. I was going to call it New Track of the Week, but I am not sure if I will write about a new track every week. What if I want to write about one every two weeks? Or if I want to write about two new tracks in one week? New Track of the Week would be limiting. That’s why this series is just called New Track.
New Track features a new track. It’s a new song I have discovered that I would like to write about and share with the world. In this way, I can feature all kinds of music. In particular, I would like to write about local artists in Estonia who are connected to Viljandi in some way, but not exclusively. Rather, I’d just like to write about whatever I happen to be listening to. And today’s new (inaugural) track is ‘Robert F. Kennedy‘ by a Jamaican outfit called The Ethiopians.
How did I discover this track? I was in a record store in Amsterdam and was looking at a Don Drummond record. Don Drummond was a Jamaican ska trombonist and integral member of the famous group The Skatalites. A lot of great Jamaican recordings from the 1960s were released as 45s, and so many are now available in various compilations. So, it was through exploring these compilations that I came upon this breezy recording, “Robert F. Kennedy.”
Learning about Jamaican groups can be complex. Often I try to find out who the bass player was on some sessions only to be led down the rabbit hole. This 2:04 song was recorded about a year after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (who would have been 100 years old on November 20, which also happens to be my birthday). The song is also credited to the Sir JJ All Stars. The Ethiopians were a popular vocal harmony group in Jamaica and in 1969 released an album called Reggae Power on the Sir JJ label run by producer Karl Johannes “J.J.” Johnson. “Robert F. Kennedy” is an instrumental track off that record.
But who was in the Sir JJ house band? It consisted of Bobby Aitken (guitar), Winston Richards (drums), Vincent White (bass), Alphonso Henry (alto sax), Val Bennett (tenor sax), Dave Parks (trombone), Mark Lewis (trumpet), Bobby Kalphat (keyboards), and someone called “Iron Sprat” (bongos). At least I think it did. Of the group, at least Vincent White is still around and playing. Here’s an interview with him recorded in July.
MY FIRST IMPRESSION is one of disorientation. I see faces emerging from the crowd, legs, arms, red lips. There are white headscarves, blue and red caps folded down on one side, the black-brimmed hats of the men’s costumes and all kinds of expressions, from the moody and pouting looks of the teenage girls in their traditional regalia to the yellow crooked-toothed grins of old men who need assistance walking. There are lines everywhere here. Lines of ladies moving like migratory birds in unison toward some far-off goal, be it an assembly point or a staging area. Some of them are in line for the toilets, hundreds maybe, others are in line for ice cream. Lines line the stadium steps, take their positions on the fields, and then form ornate and intricate shapes that one can only appreciate by watching the enormous stadium screen.
This is Kalevi Central Stadium in Tallinn, Estonia, on a brisk and windy Thursday evening in early July. Built in 1955, the stadium is said to accommodate 12,000 people, but looking in every direction, I have no way of determining how many people are really here at the Iseoma Song and Dance Festival. I try to do some quick calculations — I count about 100 people, and then trying to guess how many people might be here all together, but then I abandon this task completely. All I can say is that there are a lot of people here, many people. At one end of the stadium, beyond a grove of trees, I find myself inside a tent city of dancers. A man in a black robe, the kuub of the southern Estonian Mulks, is helping a young blonde woman get into her dress beside a tree. Her arms are up in the air and he’s tugging away on her belt. The woman doesn’t look comfortable, but I suppose that such sacrifices are necessary for the nation.
The wind flows over the crowds, chasing away any remaining heat and humidity. Near the podium at the front of the stadium, guitarist Andre Maaker is pacing anxiously with a guitar. I try to make a joke about all the nuns at the event, nodding to the white headscarves, but Maaker is in no mood for jokes. Singer Kelly Vask is standing nearby in a traditional dress waiting. A moment later, I see why, as they take the stage to perform the national anthem.
For me, Maaker’s compositions will turn out to be the most memorable of the dance festival. First there is one called “Lööme Loojanguni Lokku” (composed with Laura Võigemast) and then “Iseoma” which he helped Jaan Pehk arrange. The melodies of these songs are so sweet and so soft that they stick to me like sugar. There are no bold crescendos to them. There is no drama. Everything is just so nice and so tore. Thisis the Estonian word. Yes, everything is so tore that I almost start crying and I don’t know why. All night long, as I try to sleep off the first night of the festival in a friend’s Mustamäe apartment, I hear the verses of “Lööme Loojanguni Lokku” and feel a profound shift is underway, as if the stars have reached down and pulled me up into the euphoria of the cosmos. I think most people feel like this at the song and dance festival.
A world of delicate music
IN THE MORNING, I take the Number 84 bus back into the city center, sharing the ride with a group of dancers in Seto costume who have been sleeping 10 or 20 to a room in the Tallinna Saksa Gümnaasium. Once, when I was staying at the Sai Baba ashram in India, I happened to spend a few nights in an all-male dormitory that consisted of hundreds of bunk beds arranged in a gym. These beds were filled with Sai Baba devotees from all over the world, in whom I took an almost anthropological interest. One of them, an older Italian man, had discovered his guru through a leaflet, which claimed Sai Baba was the embodiment of god. “If he claims to be god, who am I to argue?” the old Italian told me. Another devotee, a comedian from New Jersey, carried miniature figurines of Hanuman and Ganesha and would worship them every morning. He was counting on these gods to help him with his career in show business. At night, the Indian dormitory was a curious place. Hungarian devotees would have nightmares and start screaming in Hungarian. While watching the dancers in Seto costumes on the bus, I can’t help but wonder if their experiences have been similar. Do the Seto men start yelling in Seto in their sleep? Have there been intriguing conversations about Peko, the thunder god?
I spend most of the day in the warm sun of the rahvamuusikapidu, or the National Music Festival, on Freedom Square, pondering such things while being serenaded by youths playing the violin, kannel, bagpipe, and karmoška. Again, the music is so soft and so sweet that I feel that familiar stirring sensation. Watching the young women strum their kannels, I wonder about their inner worlds too. I wonder what they dream about. How do they feel? What are the desires that they have hidden away behind this pleasant music? This is the only world that they have ever known, a world of EU-subsidized highways, of bountiful supermarkets, a world of choirs, ensembles, and festivals. Their lives are lived from event to event, from rehearsal to rehearsal. There’s no time for worry or existential questions in this world. Theirs is a world of delicate music, where there are no loud voices, no shouting, no despair, no angst, no ennui. The life of the lovely kannel player seems gentle, patient, even kind.
In the evening, I am back at the Kalevi stadium for the final performance of the dance festival. One of my friends is a dance enthusiast and has been vigorously documenting her dance group on social media. But trying to find her or anyone at the dance festival is impossible. Every woman has blonde hair done up in braids just like she does. They are all wearing those kinds of tights and those colored skirts that she wears. They all look like the Estonian dolls they sell in the airport souvenir shops, though I would never tell her she looks like that. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see her flit by, with a big, beautiful smile on her face. She looks happy, happier than I’ve seen her in months. I worry it’s a happiness that can’t be sustained.
On the stage, there is a closing ceremony, and women and men in traditional garb ascend a steep staircase to be recognized for their contributions to the festival. The air is brisk, cool, calming. The sun is just peaking through the clouds over the distant skyline of the city. Behind the stage, there are stacks of what I think are evergreen Christmas wreaths, but these turn out to be made of oak leaves! Each person recognized has the oak wreath or tammepärg placed around his or her neck, so that soon it starts to look as if a whole forest of oaks is up on stage.
“But why do you use oak leaves?” I ask a woman behind the stage. “Because the oak is a very powerful tree,” she says, with an almost mystical glint in her eyes. I wonder about who creates the oak wreaths, where the branches are cut from and what becomes of them. Maybe someone mounts them on the wall of their sauna, to be revered for all time, or maybe they just wind up where everything else winds up in Estonia, as kindling for a fire in the furnace?
Soon our guitarist friend Maaker is also on stage with a wreath of oak leaves around his neck. When I ask him about the experience, he confirms that it was most pleasant. “Those oak wreaths just smell wonderful,” Maaker says. “And everyone at the dance festival was smiling.”
A rainy parade
I SPEND THE SECOND NIGHT of the festival in another friend’s apartment downtown. He’s just moved in and there is no furniture there, so my bed is a camping mattress, a sleeping bag, and a weak pillow. In the middle of the night, I hear people yelling and imagine that my friend is fighting with the police in the next room. I wait for the Estonian police to wake me up and interrogate me, but when I am at last roused from my sleep by the sound of a trumpet player somewhere nearby playing the national anthem at daybreak, I realize everything must have been taking place in the parking lot instead. My friend has in the meantime made a pot of coffee and when I ask him about the police, he says that he has no idea what I’m on about. “That’s just what life is like in Tallinn,” he says. “There are always people yelling at night.”
Tallinn life is a little bit different during the festival. My friend’s apartment is across from the Tallinna 21. Kool. At 10 am, there is a group of men in traditional black hats or kaabud and knickers seated around in front, like extras from the 2019 film Truth and Justice. I walk between these austere characters and enter the school to have a look around. In its atrium, about a hundred children are sitting and standing and sipping from juice boxes. On the second floor, the suitcases are piled up by the windows. Down the hall, I am greeted by a woman in a red headdress or tanu from Pärnumaa. Their group comes from Audru, she says, which isn’t too far from where my children’s grandmother was born. I have a complicated relationship with the Estonians. I am not one of them, nor do I wish to be, but my children are them. So we are relatives of a kind. Inside a classroom, I ask the dancers what it’s like to sleep in a school.
But you can forget any stories about loud nightmares. These people are tightknit and are used to each other’s company. They only respond with, “Noh, täitsa tore oli.” “Well, it was nice.”
The rongkäik or parade is tore, too, but it’s a challenge. One needs stamina, strength to march in this parade. Sheets of rain fall on us all along the route. The poncho I have brought along is quickly soaked, as are my pants. My hair is a wet mess, my skin is cold and damp. My journals are wet, the ink runs in places. My friend and I take refuge in Viru Keskus where I order a hot plate of Uzbek plov. My friend is not the kind of person who cries easily, or expresses any emotion without a joke or healthy skepticism. When you have lived as much as we have, those gentle, peaceful, fluttering kannel-music like moments are few and fleeting. But he admits that he can’t get through a rongkäik without shedding at least some tears. We’ve both been in Estonia for what feels like forever and talk about when Swedbank was Hansapank and when there was no Viru Keskus. Most changes are welcome, but we’re also worried that the Song and Dance Festival will eventually become a cultural attraction, where tourists buy up all the tickets and Estonians are only able to watch it at home. He considers that businesses might start sponsoring these events, so that one day there will be a Prisma, Rimi, or A. Le Coq Choir.
We agree that the festivals are an occasion for social renewal. All societies are made up of such tiny, bite-sized building blocks, like village choirs or dance groups, and of these smaller pieces, more elaborate superstructures are created. The festivals are necessary for society to function. They bond people together and the bonds created must last until the next festival. We hope that Tallinn never becomes another Venice or Barcelona, overrun by Jezz Bezos and other mindless tourists. It’s true that neither of us is Estonian. But we do have Estonian kids. We do worry for them.
The main event
IT’S A LONG MISTY WALK through Kadriorg to get to the song festival on Saturday. I take the Number 1 tram and then cross bridges and climb steps, eventually passing the Japanese Garden and exiting through a parking lot across from the Song Festival Grounds. When a person is caught up in those dense crowds, it becomes hard to construct a timeline of what happens. Even my journals become a mess of discombobulated, half-written entries, jotted down in spare moments and out of order. One thing I do see is a blonde, middle-aged woman running through the food area crying out, “Police! Police! Does anyone know where the police are?” Having seen some guards nearby, I point her in their direction. In chatting with some officers later, I find out that the number one issue they have to contend with is lost children. There’s even a pickup point where as many as 10 children might sit waiting for a parent to retrieve them. One wonders what life is like for the children in this makeshift “kindergarten.”
The police also have to deal with the occasional unruly attendee who has decided to “pregame” for the festival and either gotten drunk at home or hidden a flask of vodka in his underpants. (There is no alcohol on sale at the event). “It’s a shame,” one of the police tells me. “There are some who do not see this festival as a holy event, but as an opportunity to drink.”
The singing is here, but the singing and the songs are only a part of the experience. Yes, we have all come to hear these songs, to sing along, but the festival is also about the circus city that springs up around the stage, or the troupes of children in wet ponchos stumbling across the wet grass, following the instructions of some stern teacher who has commanded them here to participate in this grand event, or the meandering conversations in the press tent where French and Finnish journalists rub elbows and munch on free ice cream. There’s a lot to this thing, much more than any agile camera work or grinning selfie can ever do justice to.
After being drenched by rain for a day and a half, the appearance of the sun toward the end of the concert on Sunday does seem like a small miracle. Then come the best-known songs, “Tuljak,” which is conducted by choirmaster Triin Koch, and “Ta Lendab Mesipuu Poole,” which is conducted by composer Hirvo Surva. These musical personalities are treated with such reverence that every one of their moves is observed with an awesome curiosity. It’s almost like watching Wimbledon. Every flick of the wrist, every nod of the head is somehow meaningful. The conductors look as if they are holding back a mighty wave with the power of their hands.
What is it like to stand up there? I wonder. And how does one feel at the end? Neeme Järvi, the grand old conductor, now aged 88, knows this feeling well. His movements are tight, precise, controlled, but at the end, in a moment of triumph, Neeme Järvi topples over. From the back of the Song Festival Grounds, the Üldala, or general area, no one knows if he has just slipped or if really, being so caught up in the music, Järvi decided that this was his final day and he was going to go out with a cymbal crash. Throughout the entirety of the festival area, there is only silence and concern. This was obviously not planned. Is he alive? Has he died? What kind of festival even is this? But then we see that Neeme Järvi is alive and well and he jokes to the crowd as they chant, “Elagu! Elagu! Elagu!” Which means something like, “Long may you live!”
It is the final festival miracle.
The morning after
AND NOW IT’S THE MORNING of the day after. But when did this day even begin? When the light of the day is nearly seamless and the last people go home after the summer light returns, isn’t it hard to find a line between the two? After the festival, I have trouble sleeping. I awake at three and then five and then eight. I can hear the cries of the gulls and the muddle of downtown life at dawn. Like life, the trams creak back to work, back to normality. Even though my arms and legs are sore from standing for days, and my mouth is dry, my hair is greasy, there’s goop in my eyes, and I’m still wearing yesterday’s shirt, my other clothes piled up on the floor, my socks kicked across the room, the light of the new day is unrelenting. Even when I can’t bring myself to get up, and the euphoria of the festival is still pulsing in my blood, I get back on my feet, because the sunlight won’t leave me alone and life does move onward. Just as I do as I make my way to the Must Puudel cafe in the Old Town where I order a coffee and breakfast, first thing. Hungry city birds are perched, ready to peck at any discarded crumb.
After breakfast I go for a walk to stretch my legs, muddle through this new, post-festival reality that I have awakened to. Some tired singers are lounging in the sun of the Town Hall Square. Who knows when, or if, they ever went to sleep. On nearby Lai Street, I find a lillepärg or crown of flowers lying on the ground. Someone must have left it here in the early morning. I wonder who the woman was who left this flower crown here. I wonder what this crown has seen. By tomorrow, all of its petals will be dry, I think. By tomorrow, the festival will just be a memory.
An Estonian-language version of this piece was published online on 13 July 2025 in the magazine Edasi.
MY EDITOR CALLED ME. He said that he wanted me to write not one but two profiles of Sabrina Carpenter. “Sabrina Carpenter?” I said. “You mean that blonde lady with the fuzzy eyebrows?” “She’s an acclaimed singer-songwriter,” my editor said. “Men want her and women want to be her.” “If you say so,” I said. How out of touch was I becoming, or had I become? I had never even had a TikTok account. I had never heard one of Miss Carpenter’s songs, though I had heard her talking about a childhood crush on Paul McCartney on some American late night show. Paul McCartney, now that was someone I knew of. I was more of a Sir Paul person.
At that time, I was at my aunt’s house in Sand City, waiting for my father to pick me up. Or was I supposed to meet him at the conference center? There had been some miscommunication about the getting picked up or meeting up part. I kept calling him but each time he answered, I could only hear the sounds of the conference behind him, while he yelled, “Where are you?” through the phone. Then he would lose the call. I’d redial and then be met with that recorded message, “The mobile phone you’re trying to reach is either switched off or out of area.”
My aunt was stroking a new puppy all this time on the porch of her house out there in Sand City. To think, I had originated in this bucolic, waterside town. But that was a long time ago. “Why don’t we go visit the old dairy,” she said, referring to a farm down the street from my grandma’s house. Somehow this had become closer, even though it was in a different town. We started to walk to the old dairy together when a sky blue bus drove past and parked on an adjacent lawn. “That would be your Cousin Linda,” my aunt said. “She’s back from Amsterdam.”
Cousin Linda was living in the blue bus. She had a new daughter and was nursing her as she spoke to us. She had also got a new husband too, a Dutchman named Jan. When this goateed Dutchman came in to check on his wife and daughter, my cousin answered him back in Dutch. Linda was now fluent in Dutch. “Well, I haven’t seen you in a while,” Cousin Linda said. “What are you doing back in Sand City?” “I don’t know,” I told her. “My father left me here and went to a conference. Which is a pity because I’m supposed to be working on two profiles of Sabrina Carpenter for a magazine.” My cousin, who was even older than me, squinted. “Who’s Sabrina Carpenter?” she asked. “An acclaimed singer-songwriter,” I told her. “With fuzzy eyebrows.”
Just then the phone rang again. It was my father. I could hear the conference noise in the background. My father was trying to make himself heard. “Where are you?” he repeated. “Where the hell are you?”
ONE DAY IN EARLY APRIL, when there was still fresh snow on the ground, I was walking down the street towards the seamstress’ place when I overheard two school boys singing a song outside the Lõuna-Mulgimaa Puuetega Inimeste Ühing, or the Association of People with Disabilities of South Mulgimaa, as it translates in English. The words of the familiar song they sang together went something like this, “Mi amore, espresso macchiato, macchiato, macchiato, por favore.”
The melody tumbled down into the street like big wet flakes of snow. I already knew it so well. Sometimes I think that “Espresso Macchiato” is always playing somewhere. I only happen to hear it now and then. When I am not hearing it, it is being played somewhere else or it’s replaying itself in someone’s mind. The song is always playing somewhere out in the universe. Maybe it has always existed then, and its creator merely channeled and recorded the song?
“Do you know that I am researching this song,” I told the young lads, who were perhaps 10 years old. They looked up at me with curious eyes, but they were not intimidated by the big stranger in a dark coat. Rather they were friendly and seemed to take me as just another, much larger school boy. One of the boys held his thumb up to me. “Good,” he said. “Because I love that song.” “Well, what else do you think about the song?” I asked the first boy. “It’s my favorite song,” he said. “Mine too,” said the other boy. “‘Espresso Macchiato’ is my favorite song too,” he added. “Very good,” I said. “Enjoy your favorite song.” “Oh, we will,” they said. At that, I left the boys at the corner, but I could hear them singing as they walked the other way.
‘You just have to watch it’
Everyone, I think, has now developed a special relationship with “Espresso Macchiato,” Estonia’s 2025 Eurovision entry, performed by Tommy Cash. For some, like those little Viljandi boys, it has become their new favorite. Seventy-five years from now, when they are living in some South Estonian hooldekodu, or nursing home, they might sit beside each other watching Aktuaalne kaamera and singing the song. “Mi casa very grandioso. Mi money numeroso.”
Everyone has their own story about how they first heard “Espresso Macchiato” and how it began to manifest itself in their lives. Think about it. Where were you when you first heard it? For me, I was sitting in a cafe in Tartu meeting an old friend in winter when she pulled out her phone and told me I just had to watch this video. “You just have to watch it,” she said. I didn’t know what to make of it at first. The friend, an Estonian journalist from Kuressaare, thought it was fantastic. I understood that to Estonians, I am something of an Italian, though not the genuine thing, and for them, it’s interesting how someone like me might respond to these stereotypes. Coffee, spaghetti, mafia. Screens displaying red-and-white checkered tablecloths.
There he stood, the mustachioed Tommy Cash, looking more like Dracula than any mafioso. The thin mustache, the shoulder-length hair, the pale skin. Was he not some kind of caffeinated disco nosferatu? But it was not blood upon the lips of this Estonian musician. It was a coffee drink. There he stood drinking another espresso macchiato. “Life is like spaghetti,” Cash sings. “It’s hard until you make it.” Then he sings, “No stresso, no stresso. It’s gonna be espresso.”
I had to wholeheartedly agree with him. Life is like spaghetti. More coffee is the answer. “Espresso Macchiato” is not just a Eurovision entry. It is a philosophical manifesto on life.
After my first encounter with “Espresso Macchiato,” baristas began to sing it to me. Nobody in Estonia could order an espresso anymore without someone asking if they didn’t want an espresso macchiato. “No stresso, no stresso,” the baristas said. “No need to be depresso!”
Did I really look so depressed?
Italians love to complain
There has also been controversy. An Italian consumer association appealed to the European Broadcasting Union suggesting that it was not fit to be included in the Eurovision competition. Some right-wing lawmakers were indignant and condemned it on social media. Not knowing how to process contrasting feelings of being offended but also honored, Italians dressed up like Estonians and made their own version about eating sprats. “Sööme sprotte!” The song had descended into a kind of transnational food fight, with Estonians throwing coffee cups and spaghetti over the continent at the Italians and the Italians tossing back cans of fish.
Maurizio D’Agapito, an Italian resident in Estonia who is also a musician and performer, has been asked to participate in numerous podcasts and radio programs, such as Spaghetti alla Chitarra, to weigh in on the merits of the song. Maurizio also provided his own analysis on his YouTube Channel, Itaallane Eestis, and so I decided to seek him out, arranging an interview at Fotografiska in Tallinn on a March day. I was intimidated of course, because I would have to do an interview in Italian. Maurizio is a Roman — he even looks like a Roman, with his coarse hair, broad shoulders — and did not mince his words when it came to Cash’s notorious song.
He approves of it. He performs it at his concerts. “Estonians go crazy when I play it,” he said.
“Italians have a word for a song that gets stuck in your head,” Maurizio added. “A tormentone.”
A tormentone torments its listener. Yet this torment is not necessarily bad. One learns to enjoy being tormented by a tormentone. There is something perversely satisfying about the torment. Here I must agree. If “Espresso Macchiato” had been too infectious, too catchy, it might have long ago burned itself out. But the song takes its time. It has a relaxed feel. You start to miss it.
“Mi amore, mi amore …”
Such is the nature of a tormentone. It is a phantom song, attaining a kind of immortality. One must be careful not to invoke the name of a tormentone. Otherwise it will begin to torment again.
And as for the controversy?
“But Espresso Macchiato is not Italian!” protested Maurizio. “It’s a big fucking mix of Spanish, Italian, English. Broccolino, no?” He laughs. The man is correct. Por favore is Spanish, not Italian. “It would be stupid to be offended by it.” He dismissed the idea with a hand gesture.
Some Italians were offended though, mostly by the use of the word ‘mafioso.’ The mafia is a very sensitive topic in Italy. Just three days ago, as I type this while drinking a coffee, the police arrested 24 in Naples for running a parking protection racketing scheme. They were also charged with possessing illegal weapons and drugs. “The mafia is a big issue,” said Maurizio.
The real issue though, as he put it, is that Italians just like to complain about things. If it’s hot, it’s too hot. If it is cold, it’s too cold. No matter the coffee or the meal, it could have been better. He is not the first Italian to acknowledge this national trait for complaining. If the Estonian way is to suffer quietly through real hardships then the Italian way is to complain loudly about imaginary ones. “Italians love to complain,” said Maurizio. “This gave them another reason to complain.”
Mostly, though, Maurizio is a fan of Mr. Cash. He said the marketing around the song, controversy included, had been perfect. “Oh, he was clever,” said Maurizio I imagine with a pinch of envy. “Very, very clever.”
The boy from Kopli
Of the author of this tormentone, I still know very little. He was born in Tallinn a dozen years after I was, and is of mixed ancestry. His home language was Russian and he speaks fluent Estonian having been educated in the Estonian language. He is therefore a multiethnic polyglot. Mr. Cash considers himself a post-Soviet rapper with an Eastern European soul and Scandinavian resume, they say. Perhaps that might be a good way of describing Tallinn to all. That’s the thing about artists, we hold them up as idols to better understand ourselves. Estonia in recent years has been worshipful of homegrown exotic heroes like Stefan, Alika, and Tommy.
I had thought that his birthname was probably “Toomas Sularaha,” or Tommy Cash in Estonian. In fact, it is Tomas — with one ‘o’ — Tammemets. He was raised in Kopli though, which tells me a lot. A long time ago, in the old days, when I was a 24-year-old recent arrival to Tallinn with a wife from Karksi-Nuia and a newborn baby who I would take on wintry excursions to Säästumarket, I also gave some English lessons in Kopli, which was a wooden ghetto of half-burnt buildings. There were no Argentinian steakhouses in those days, no boutiques or seaside breweries. There were characters who looked a lot like, well, Tommy Cash, in puffy jackets drinking vodka. Tommy Cash came out of Kopli, was a creature of its misty alleycat-inhabited back alleyways.
This idea, of a scrappy street performer who hustled his way into high-profile collaborations with Charli xcx and Diplo, has impressed even the most reticent Estonians. “You’ve got to hand it to him,” a bearded, Camus-obsessed Estonian told me on the street. “In a country where nobody wants to stand out, Tommy hasn’t been afraid to draw attention to himself, to stick his neck out.”
Another Estonian who is more aligned with the folk culture that colors Viljandi life, was similarly supportive of Mr. Cash. “I don’t know if I am down with ‘Pussy Money Weed’,” she said, referring to his 2018 single, which has garnered more than 15.4 million YouTube views since its release. “But if he is making fun of that kind of attitude, that lifestyle, then I can be supportive of that.”
It’s hard for me to understand the music world of which Tommy Cash is a character. I’m old school. I come from the world of concept albums, meticulously recorded in studios in the Bahamas or in Stockholm. Think Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Or Björk’s Homogenic. Think of Radiohead’s Kid A. I suppose in the old days, popularity was measured in units shipped, gold records gained. I’m not sure that 15.4 million views means something. What if one person just kept hitting refresh 15.4 million times? I don’t know what to make of these weirdly titled collaborations called “Zuccenberg,” “Ca$h Ready,” and “It’s Crazy, It’s Party.” I don’t know.
My old analog world of artistry did colide with Mr. Cash’s world of being a digital provocateur. That was the day when Kristiina Ehin, who writes paper books and paper poems, found herself in the Ankrusaal of Kopli unable to pay for a coffee, but rescued by a swashbuckling Mr. Cash. He promptly paid for the lady’s drink and informed her that, having already won Eurovision, at least in spirit, he had little better to do than to mill about Kopli cafes rescuing distressed poets.
“It did not change my life,” Kristiina later confided. “But it was fun and it was nice to see him.”
Kristiina’s husband, the esteemed musician Silver Sepp, also did not come away emptyhanded. Author of his own song about coffee, called “Kohvi,” in which he beat boxes using a microphone and coffee cup, Silver said he was not at all jealous of Mr. Cash after he rescued his wife in a Kopli cafe. “On the contrary,” he said. “After all, I got a coffee cup for myself,” he said. “A new instrument!”
The Kristiina Ehin Coffee Incident has been added to the lore around “Espresso Macchiato.” It is part of the story of the song, as much a part of it as the Italians who did a cover version about eating sprats. Such stories are as important as the songs, I think. All good songs have stories.
A parting drink
All across Estonia, espresso macchiato has either been added to the menu, or has risen to the top. At Sumi, young patrons from Kalamaja ask for it with a morning donut or pastry. At the Cafe Gustav in Solaris, they have even underlined the drink to make it more apparent to their clients.
“We’ve always offered it,” the barista said. “After the song came out, well, there was a wave.”
And at my local drinking establishment in Viljandi the drink, while not on the menu, is available upon request. I have been told to be careful. “It’s quite strong,” the barista warned me. “It’s just an espresso with just a little bit of milk.” The cup of espresso macchiato arrives and I sip it. It’s frothy and does have a certain kick. So this is the famed drink, I think. This tormenting coffee is the one that rules them all. This is the drink that could deliver Estonia a great Eurovision victory. One could get seriously addicted to a drink like this.
I WAS TRYING to find some laundry detergent. That’s really how that whole story started. Someone had, after many years, returned to me a box of clothes, including precious and once-prized pairs of pajamas. The light blue ones with little golden anchors on them that reminded me of Popeye, and the rougher-textured wool ones, with the polar bear print. At the supermarket at the Baltic Station, where the dead-eyed cashier ladies never even so much as acknowledge your very existence, I searched the aisles. While I was trying to make up my mind between Mulieres and Mayeri I passed the media stand. And that’s where I saw it, gleaming to me among the tabloids, newspapers, and glossy magazines about the USSR.
Skiing with the Dead: Stavanger ’72.
What the hell was this? Its cover was a color photograph of the Grateful Dead with the cool, clean and white Scandinavian mountains beyond them. There were some ski chalets in the distance, a period lift. Mickey Hart the drummer was out in front with his headband and dark mustache. Jerry Garcia was behind him. Jerry had on a big wool hat that was incapable of covering all of his bushy black hair. He was smiling. Of course, he was smiling. Why wouldn’t Jerry be smiling while he was skiing at one of the Norwegian resorts. I knew that the Dead had gone on tour in Europe in ’72 and had even recorded an album called Europe ’72. But I didn’t know that the Grateful Dead had ventured as far north as Norway or that they even skied.
This was a strange new discovery. A new chapter in Dead lore. Did Jeff Tamarkin know about this? I beheld this fascinating magazine and skimmed its contents. There was an article about how Phil Lesh dosed the band before they got to the to the famed Bjorli Ski Center, and a recent interview with the other drummer Bill Kreutzman about a long-sought after bootleg recording they did up in the mountains called Trippin’ on the Slopes: the Bjorli Sessions. I shook my head. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the Dead. I was very wrong.
At that moment, an older hippie with gray hair and sunglasses happened to walk past me in the Baltic Station supermarket. You know the type, a watered down version of George Carlin in his black sweater years. He had a basket full of produce. He said, “What are you looking at there, young man?” I showed him the glossy magazine. “Did you know that the Dead played shows in Norway in ’72?” I told the hippie. “They went skiing! Can you imagine? Jerry on skis!” “Of course,” the hippie told me. “I was there, man. Skiing. LSD. Norwegians. It was far out.”
WHEN THE TOPIC is psychedelic or garage rock, then the dangerous word “retro” is always lurking in the background. People hear it and immediately start to compare it to what came before. “It sounds like 1968!” Are modern musicians really incapable of creating something that’s better than the original?
I should acknowledge that I often like today’s music more, because it was composed, recorded, and performed today, and echoes contemporary issues. I have my favorite groups but one of these is certainly The Mystery Lights, a California band that now resides in New York, but is in its bones and soul a California creation. They’re from Salinas originally, John Steinbeck country, where there are harbors and grassy hills. Something more laidback than your average, anxious worrisome East Coast music.
Their newest LP Purgatory (Daptone Records) was released last fall. The songs are fast, energetic, satisfying, creative. The guitars are wonderful. But the themes? “Ascend to heaven/or descend to hell,” they sing in the song “Purgatory.” The video for the title track shows Satan roaming around Manhattan in a Hawaiian shirt, and the band bedecked in red horns. I have some religious friends, so I’d hesitate to share my new favorite group with them, but at the same time, I feel the themes reflect a lot of what is going on in the modern world as well as in myself. I’m reminded that it doesn’t always pay to be good. Sometimes it feels just heavenly to be the devil. The Mystery Lights still haven’t come to Estonia, but they will be performing at Vega in Copenhagen on 27 May.
WHERE WERE WE? I wondered. Then one of a pack of school boys turned my way and said, “Don’t you know, you’re in 1968!” Is that why everything was so weirdly sepia-toned, as if we had all stepped out of one of those ancient, musty smelling album covers, like Waiting for the Sun by The Doors, or Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. by The Monkees? A strange place was 1968, one foot in the past, one in the future. People’s hair was merely growing then, but had not yet achieved its 1970s freak-flag length. Wide collars, floppy hats. What was I even doing in this murky picture of the past? I was standing outside a school on a street. The boys from 1968 turned and went one way, and I went the other. A girl in a plaid dress passed me by.
It was autumn in 1968, a rainy autumn, or was it a rainy spring? It was cool, moist, there were wet leaves on the mottled asphalt of the street. I walked and walked and soon I was in my old neighborhood on Long Island, which wouldn’t be built for another 17 years or so, but here it was, and the houses were all finished. Jocko and his family were outside their home, which was across the street from my old house, and the sun had just come out. We used to play right over there, in the sand dunes between his house and the neighbors’, and wrestle in the mud. One time he even sprayed us with his sister’s tropical perfume, which made the hornets and the bees of the neighborhood go wild with lust. This time, he was kneeling before a stack of roofing tiles while his brothers did the hard work. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Are you doing okay, man?” I said. Jocko looked up at me, good-natured Sicilian that he was, and said, “Yeah, of course. Just this renovation job is taking forever.” It was. The façade was missing. I could see his room up on the second floor, the wind gusting through. “Where do you sleep at night?” I asked Jocko. “We have to sleep here,” he sighed. “But it sure does get cold at night.”
In the back of the house, I found stacks of utility uniforms, the kinds that construction workers wear. These piles formed elaborate patterns, so that it almost looked like they were a deck of playing cards. I was baffled by the uniforms and knew not what to make of the find.
From there, I walked on.
Eventually, I wound up back at the school where I started. It was a brick building, like all of the school buildings in the district, which had been, per chance, constructed in 1968. I stood there waiting outside of the school while other parents waited for their children. Just then, my friend El Scorcho, a Latin folk singer with a faint moustache I knew from Estonia, arrived. He came down the hill on his bicycle to the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel. He too was here in 1968, and his clothing was of the modern fashion. He wore a brown leather jacket, his black hair was becoming unruly, and he smelled of incense and marijuana. As soon as he saw me, he slowed his peddling and came to a stop. “Oh, you’re here too. You’re in 1968 too,” he said. “What are we doing in 1968?” I asked him. “Beats me,” he said. “I’ve been stuck in 1968 all week. But do you want to get some tacos? I found a place that’s good. Jim Morrison even goes there.”
north! 