Reflections from Dainų Šventė

“Funk and dance, not folk song,
is our life, our lifestyle”

Breakdancer executing a one-handed spin to the song Jump
Around by House of Pain in Kalnu Parkas, Vilnius,
on the opening night of Dainų Šventė, 2009

Text: Emily Šaras
Associate Editor

It was a misty and moist afternoon in the summer of 2009, a year that celebrated Vilnius, Lithuania as a European Capital of Culture.  Just as eager as I was sleep-deprived, I started my ethnomusicology research project that night by observing the opening Dainų Šventė event.  My particular strain of jet lag – the seven-hour difference between Vilnius and Boston – was still a haunting presence, leading me to wander zombie-like throughout the streets of Senamiestis that evening.  But even in my undead state, I was on a mission: like the hundreds of Lithuanians gathered in the city center, I had come to the opening night festivities of Dainų Šventė to hear my first taste of Lithuanian dainos (folk music) performed live.  A hedgehog in the fog, I sought musical truth to clear out my haze.

By the early evening hours, dozens of benches were already full with an audience of all ages.  The concept that these strangers would gather in Katedros Aikštė to unabashedly and publicly sing together astounded me.  As a classical singer, I have become accustomed to performing solo on a stage, separated from my audience.  Yet these patient Lithuanians sang along to a recording of “Ant Kalno Mūrai,” with lyrics projected on a large video screen like a large, nationalist karaoke party.  Was this the authentic Lithuania my grandfather, a refugee during the Soviet Occupation in the late 1930s, had described in the stories he told me when I was a child?  Perhaps, I thought, but with some newfangled technology involved.  For a moment, I believed in the homogeneity of the spectacle. 

Yet before the choirs began to sing for both the live audience and the thousands of Lithuanian viewers glued to their television sets at home, I broke away from the crowd in the event seating area to follow a curious sound that reminded me of home – a saxophone.  Keeping an eye on the growing masses behind me, I walked about a hundred yards away from the crowd into Kalnų Parkas, the wooded, hilly area behind the city’s famous cathedral.  There, I found the boom-box, the break dance mat, and eleven twenty-somethings jamming to what suddenly sounded so exotic against the folk backdrop:  funk music.

The troupe members rotated on and off the mat, contorting their bodies into spinning shapes.  They smiled, breathed excitedly and hummed along with the distorted saxophone melody line.  Intrigued, I pulled the leader of the troupe aside for an interview.  I was quite curious as to why they were dancing to funk under the trees instead of singing at the national festival in the square.  Folk music, after all, is defined as the music of the people.

The young man took a pause, and a long drag of his joint before offering me a hit.  Disappointed at my refusal (some American I am), he motioned back to growing the crowds and shook his head.  Over there, he explained to me, was not the music he identified with.  “Funk and dance, not folk song, is our life, our lifestyle…Funk is our music.”  Such a simple but poignant statement shocked me.  It was only away from all of the media publicity surrounding Capital of Culture 2009 events that I had come into contact with artists my age whose musical identities are on the blurred margins of Lithuanian musical culture.  And just like that, he jumped back on the mat and threw his body into a spin.

Pluralism persisted right there in front of me, even on the night all Lithuanians were supposed to come together in unified song.  All of a sudden, I understood the night’s haze in a different light:  there was beauty in this newfound blur between musical genres.  Towards the end of the concert, the orchestra began the finale with a pop song.  “Kaip gyveni?  Gerai!” (How are you?  Great!) sang the audience members as two of them grabbed my hands and shook them in the air.  We had never spoken to each other before, and yet all of us were dancing together, sharing in a friendly moment in which even I, the American outsider, felt included and welcomed. 

That night in the fog, I threw away my search for the authentic and started to study music that crosses and blurs the borders of society.  I could not clearly define the evening’s particular mix of music, but it was clear that the heterogeneity and the haziness were the definitive parts of us all coming together.  People from all over the world are connected to the small city of Vilnius, and diversity and pluralism at the core of this country’s ancient history.  My experiences that foggy night are reflections of that truth.  Music has the power to connect our voices and bring us into musical and emotional harmony with one another.  Perhaps this spirit of connection offers us a viewpoint that looks beyond our “norms” to see the value of the music, art, and culture within margins of our community.