Sing On! Estonia rejoices with world’s largest choir festival

Text and photos: Ants Tammemägi

Good things come in small packages, they say, and the tiny country of Estonia – population of only 1.3 million – proves this correct. Once every five years it holds a truly epic event: the world’s largest choral festival. It’s hard to imagine 35,000 people all singing the same song together on one giant stage. But it happens. Hundreds of Estonian choirs are joined by dozens of foreign choirs and meld into one single group.

The most recent Festival took place on July 6 and 7, 2019. Over 70,000 spectators listened to the mass of voices, occasionally singing along and all the time enthusiastically waving national flags. My wife Ally and I were immersed in the overwhelming crowds and loved their infectious exuberance, friendliness and fantastic pride in being Estonian. It was an enormous, emotional celebration.

To further complicate the happy mayhem, the National Folk Dance Festival, with more than 10,000 dancers, took place during the first half of the Song Festival week.

The singing and dancing take place in the capital, Tallinn, which has one of Europe’s most beautiful medieval Old Towns and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The old city, surrounded by massive ancient stone walls and turrets, was crowded with smiling, laughing people wandering in the cobble ­ stoned streets lined with colourful outdoor cafés, bars, museums and restaurants. Ally and I were constantly surprised to turn a corner and discover a dance group or musical ensemble performing or practising in a park or square.

Although most of the choirs were local, a number came from other countries, often composed of ex-pats and their descendants who fled Estonia in 1944 as the Soviet Union invaded. To qualify, the foreign choirs had to audition by submitting videos of them singing the Festival’s songs, all in Estonian. There was a strong Canadian connection as three choirs were selected from the Toronto area and one from Vancouver. A 35-strong children’s choir came from Japan. Keishi Ito, the Japanese conductor, said, “In Japan, the Estonian Song Festival is famous. Every choir singer dreams of one day singing on this stage. Our children love it here, and they found the Estonian songs fairly easy to learn.”

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