You live in a very small country that has been invaded, occupied, and controlled for decades, in fact centuries. For a brief period in the twentieth century, from 1918 until 1940, your country was free and independent, but then terror struck again. During the most recent occupation you lost family members and friends through direct violence, mass deportations, or forcible draft into the occupying army.
Through it all you had only one weapon—your voice. So you sang, and sang, and kept on singing patriotic songs, banned songs, dangerous songs, sometimes with tens or hundreds of thousands of your countrymen and women in one giant chorus, facing down the guns and tanks, raising your voices in non-violent defiance and hope. In 1989 you also joined hands with two million others in a line that stretched between Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius. From 1987 to 1991 you were a proud participant in the “Singing Revolution” during which no blood was shed. Finally, after decades of resistance, your country won back its independence in August of 1991. Not so very long ago.
If you are an Estonian, you will recognize your own nation’s story. If you aren’t, and missed the spellbinding documentary on public television about the “Singing Revolution” that was broadcast in recent months (I saw it for the first time last night), the DVD is available. You could check your local library, contact your local PBS station to ask if or when they will replay the film, or purchase the DVD. You can find it here (where you can also learn more about the Revolution): http://www.singingrevolution.com. It is also available on Amazon.com.
If you ever doubted the power of the singing human voice to change history, this documentary will convince you of its possibilities.
Michael Bizzaro says
Peter Haley says