Song Festival Part 1 Song and Dance Festival July 1999

The first All Estonian Song Festival was held in 1869 in estonian 2nd largest, student town - Tartu. Now the festival is held in the capital of Estonia - Tallinn. During the festival the population of Tallinn grows from 450 000 to more than half a million. 810 choirs, 8 000 dancers, 24 000 singers and musicians from symphonic and brass bands took part this year.

How does it differ from all other music festivals? First, it's very beautiful, you would see people wearing national dresses - all: kids, young people and old. Second, it shows the unity of the nation: guess what kind of feeling would you have when all 24 000 singers would sing the national anthem or a old well known song all together? Third, all country lives to see the festival, especially the parade.

Here are some pictures from the parade, which started when it was still raining, but toward the end the weather started to change and we could see the sun. But probably the sun wasn't fun for some of the participants, because the national clothes are pretty warm since we live pretty much to the north, but still they probably preffered the sun to the rain, I do beleive so. The fire opens the parade. It was lit in Tartu and was taken thru all the counrty districs before it reached Tallinn.



We also had many visitors this year:Finland, Denmark, USA, Australia, etc.

Visitors Vistors from Denmark

some of them are the next generation of the people who left Estonia in the previous years. It is so wonderful that they preserved their mother language (if you wonder, the population of Estonia is 1.5 million - very small if you live in such a big city as New York, Tokio, St.Petersburg; only 1 million are ethnical estonians).

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