EESTI ELU reedel, 18. veebruaril 2022 — Friday, February 18, 2022
The power of a tower Eva Eichenbaum Barnes While driving past the Murney Tower on a blustery winter’s day, I came to reflect upon the enduring symbolism and narrative power of his toric military towers, near and far. What personal feel ings, meanings and hidden stories might they evoke, beyond the measured physical aspects of their construction style, and the documented facts around their places in time? In that moment, Kingston’s own waterfront fortification, the Murney Tower, reminded me of another tower called the Pikk Hermann in Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. Tallinn is known for the many impressively con structed medieval fortifications that once guarded the Old Town from determined foreign in vaders. Strategically situated on the Baltic Sea in the north of Europe, the value of this cold, bleak and rocky port location for commerce and war was recognized over many passing centuries by the Danes, Swedes, Poles, Germans and Russians. Indigenous Estonians lived as a subservient people as wave after wave of foreign powers ruled the land for almost a thousand years. It was in the late 1800s that Estonians finally started to see themselves as a distinct cultural entity and so ciety. This has been called the ärkamise aeg, the period of awakening in their history. At the end of World War I, Estonians declared their free dom from Russia and the small country became a sovereign republic, intent on determining its own democratic future, with envisioned peace and modern prosperity. The newly created national flag was carried with solemn ceremony up 215 spiral steps inside the Pikk Hermann
(the Tall Warrior) tower, to be raised high above the parapet for the first time on December 12th, 1918. The blue, black and white colours rippled above the city and could be seen out at sea. The flag colours represented the sky, the earth and the spirit of hope, and became a national symbol of freedom, strength and unity. The short-lived aspirations of Estonians to be a self-governing nation were soon to be crushed by foreign occupiers once again, this time during World War II. Estonia became part of the Soviet Union, destined to endure harsh communist rule from Moscow behind the Iron Curtain for decades to come. Tens of thousands of Estonians were executed or deported to Siberian forced labour camps. Thousands fled as desperate refugees to Sweden and to Germany. It became illegal to fly the blue, black and white flag, or to display those colours together anywhere. The Estonian free dom flag was replaced by the red Soviet revolutionary ham mer and sickle banner at the top of the Pikk Herman tower, where it flew for the next half century. As the Soviet Union began to disintegrate in the late 1980s, some defiant Estonians dared to remove the red symbol of com munism from the tower and to raise a long-hidden and care fully protected flag from the early days of the republic in its stead. The familiar colours fluttering high above the tower over the ancient city became a deeply unifying symbol of pas sionate hope for the future of the nation once more. This story of upheaval and oppression has an encouraging ending. On February 24th, 2018 Estonia was able to celebrate its 100th anniversary, as a free, prosperous and recovering
Murney Tower, Estonian Independence Day, February 24, 2021. Photo: Eva Eichenbaum Barnes
Murney Tower, fortress in snow.
nation. The blue, black and white colours are raised every year now on Independence Day at Pikk Hermann in a quiet cere mony at dawn, with large crowds gathering in the freshly fallen snow. They sing the moving national hymn of their forefathers together, Mu Isamaa. Theirs was a hard-won free dom, born from a soul-breaking and brutal ancestral struggle that lasted for centuries. But what has this to do with Kingston and the Murney Tower? I am a Kingstonian with an Estonian heritage. My parents
Photo: Eva Eichenbaum Barnes
were refugees, lost and aban doned teenagers who escaped in small boats to Sweden and Finland during World War II. My grandparents lost their ancestral estate in Mulgimaa, in the south of Estonia, and were deported to Siberia. Because they were landowners, they were deemed criminals who stood in the way of the Stalin era political restructuring and Russification of their homeland. The unspeakable suffering caused by the trauma of war and the fearful deprivations created by life circumstances under the Soviet regime were profound and far-reaching, with
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the lingering effects felt even generations later. My parents did not believe that they would see the day when Estonia would become free and whole again in spirit. All that had been familiar and precious was lost to that generation. They were buried here in Canadian soil, never having had the chance to be laid to rest in the land of their ancestors. My cousins live in Estonia. Every year, on February 24th, I enjoy sending them greetings from Kingston as they mark their Independence Day with reverence and ceremony. The inspiration came recently to send a photo to my relatives on February 24th, a picture of what represented endurance, protec tion and strength here in the Limestone City, with some help from the Gaskin Lion, a nearby silent symbol of courage. A brisk Lake Ontario wind caught the colours of freedom in my ancestral Estonian flag against the photo backdrop of the Canadian cultural and mili tary history represented by the Murney Tower.
We’re Listening with EMW: all smiles, or why rock music has succeeded in entertaining us Vincent Teetsov Planning one’s road trip play list in the 21st century is not as easy as it once was. In the 80s, there were mixtapes on cassettes. Compact discs and bulging CD wallets prevailed in the 90s and early 2000s. A weird throwback came there after, when we started to plug iPods into those cassette auxi liary adapters. Sure, when limited to physi cal formats of music, one had to put up with whatever was around in the car, even if you’d already played it a million times. And currently, it’s not even necessary to pre-download music. If you have data, you can access practically all music ever recorded through streaming services. However, not everything out there works as music on the go. Classical is lovely at home in a quiet room. On the highway or on the subway, it’s vexing. Big changes in dynamics can’t be fully appreciated over vehicular noise, even with noise cancel ling headphones on. The same can be said for jazz. Depending on which branch or era of it you listen to, the top line of songs may meander a lot. We don’t get the same mental re ward of a melody with firm boundaries, or a chorus that strikes back again and again. For that reward, we need to sit ourselves down with pop, electronic, soul, country, blues, and dare I say it, rock. Gene Simmons from Kiss insists that rock is dead. Nevertheless, we can hear the recipe for rock’s success in the Estonian band
Smilers, starting with their 2021 song “Tee mis sa tahad.” Immediately, the palm muted rhythm guitar enters with lead singer Hendrik Sal-Saller’s dis tinctive drawl. He’s economical with the lyrics he writes, retain ing expressiveness while not crowding the verses needlessly. 18 seconds in, the drummer keeps time by tapping a drum rim and making full hits on beats two and four. 35 seconds in, the gain of the guitars increases, turning on the engine of the eight measure chorus. 32 beats, 45 syllables, and a melody that gets you hooked for the next time it comes around. This song always delivers right on time. In another song of theirs, the funny, observational tune “Veregrupp on Viru Valge,” the next superpower of rock shines. That is, the use of razor sharp vocals. It’s different from English language rock singers like Tina Turner or Robert Plant. What’s consistent, though, is how the tone of these kinds of rock singers can’t be rep licated or emulated by other instruments. Smilers’ singer contorts Estonian vowels into outlandish shapes that we can’t ignore.
What’s more, the success of rock and roll is tied to moving with youth culture. The mem bers of Smilers may be older, but they know how to carry relatable themes, like in the song “Hipisuvi” from 2017. Sal-Saller sings about breaking away from Wi-Fi and 4G to enjoy some lazy time on the beach. They also make refer ence to a Microbus from 1969, a seemingly eternal youth symbol (the coming-of-age Netflix series Outer Banks is confirmation of this). Yet, for all the power rock has, and for all the attention it receives in our documentation of modern music, it has fallen behind pop, hip hop, and elec tronic music. The same recipe won’t appeal to everyone’s tastes. What gets one listener to headbang is linear and boring to another. Rock has made room for other approaches to music: the irresistible groove of disco, the otherworldliness of electronic music, the clarity of hip hop, and so on. But the most popular genres since have always kept that beat going, like a heart, as well as that highly present, highly relatable voice.
Photo: smilers.ee
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