When we think of music made in Estonian, the first words to come to mind are Eesti regilaul, as it would be called in the literary language. The original folk singers, however, do not use the same words when speaking of their songs. What, then, are the differences between such words as Eesti (Estonia) and Maa (whose many meanings include: the Earth, soil, country, land), the Estonian language (eesti keel) and the vernacular or the language of the Earth (maakeel), the Estonian people (eesti rahvas) and the Earth people (maarahvas)?

Eesti (Estonia) is the name by which other European nations have known us. The connotations of this word contain both deprecation and recognition on the speaker's part. During the Viking era, a thousand years ago, Estonians were well-known warriors in the Baltic Sea region. Grain that had been dried in the smoke-filled barn-dwellings of Estonia was a valued strategic merchandise all over Europe during the Middle Ages. On the other hand, Estonian peasants, their language and their way of life were regarded as inferior by the Baltic Germans until the 19th century and even later, in order to have a justification for making Estonians their slaves. In 1857, the newspaper The Pärnu Courier was issued, and it was in this newspaper that Johann Woldemar Jannsen (1819-1890) referred to the Earth people using the phrase "people of Estonia". Since then, we have increasingly considered ourselves to be Estonians - a nation that awakened less than 150 years ago - and less and less the Earth people with its history of thousands of years. The words maa (the Earth, soil, country, land) and maakeel (the language of the Earth, the vernacular) have a very significant and emotionally loaded meaning in Estonian. Maa refers to the fertile soil; it is a territory, the State, our home planet, one of the primal elements, the one that gives birth to life. Maakeel, i.e the language of the Earth, is the language of the people who live in their own Earth and care for it. The Earth folk themselves used the word Maa, i.e the Land, to refer to the territory of Estonia.

The term regilaulseems to derive from the word regi (sleigh) that denotes the oldest means of transport. A sleigh would take one across a boggy patch of land, even in summertime, when a carriage would be hopelessly stuck. In the winter, a sleigh would carry you straight across swamps and lakes and along rivers and winter roads. Sleighs would help traders to cover thousands of kilometres on their journeys and to connect people from coast to coast. Sleighs leave behind them two trails running towards the horizon on the plain fields. These trails are always next to each other but they can never meet. A song would help to make long journeys on a sleigh shorter, keeping the travellers awake and lifting their spirits.

Proverbs and riddles are the shortest forms of regilaul. The longest, however, contain hundreds or even thousands of verses. Singers cast ancient myths, fairy tales and shaman journeys into the form of regilaul and handed them down from one generation to the next. At the same time, regilaul as a form of art is also a highly sophisticated means of expression. Skilled singers can transform ordinary speech into regilaul and perform it at any time. This used to be common practice during festive rituals, such as weddings, or during incantations and swearing-in ceremonies.

PEETER M. LAURITS "WAKERS OF DREAMS" 2000

A song festival with choirs from all corners of Estonia was held in Tartu in 1869 to celebrate the abolition of serfdom. Since then song festivals have been held every five years as a tribute to the idea of freedom. In 1989, one-fifth of the Estonian population gathered on the song festival grounds in Tallinn to sing their country free from occupation. The Estonian regilaul has had a central role in all these instances of communal singing. If we take the very literal meaning of the word laulupidu (song festival) then it means "to hold a song" (laulu pidama): i.e. to stop all other activities so that people can devote themselves to the song. For us Estonians, singing can be used to change the world.

After the Great Northern War in the 18th century, the country folk started to sing chorales in the fraternities of the Moravian Brethren. Choral singing took over the place that had belonged to the regilaul and to original Estonian music. Lyrics were now mostly translated from other languages and the result was often awkward-sounding, when compared with the regilaul, and ignored the inherent rhythm of Estonian. The next generation, who grew up in families belonging to the fraternities of the Moravian Brethren, realised the significance of the regilaul for the continuity of the Estonian language and music. Jakob Hurt (1839-1907) was one of those raised by Moravian Brethren, and it is thanks to his call to record folk songs and legends that we have an extensive collection of manuscripts containing songs in the metre typical of the regilaul. Thousands of pages of songs recorded in thousands of villages are a living proof of the good level of literacy among our forefathers even in the 19th century and of their deep love for music in their mother tongue. Uku Masing (1909-1985), who had also been raised in a fraternity of the Moravian Brethren, has given us a theory about the connections between the worldviews represented in the regilaul and the worldviews of other ancient peoples of the world.

Composer Veljo Tormis (b. 1930), who grew up in the family of a parish clerk and an organist, brought the genuine regilaul back into the repertoires of choirs. However, the regilaul studied and sung in a choir is very different from the regilaul that flows freely through the singer. The power of such songs and the ability to sing them is also characteristic of some of the Estonians' kindred nations, e.g. the Sami, the Ostyaks, the Voguls, and also of indigenous peoples on other continents. For such peoples singing means the free flow of nature through the human spirit. Each singing occasion is a unique event that cannot be repeated. During each singing process, the landscape, the people and the events that are the subject matter of the song are born anew for the singer and for the listeners.

The power of regilaul is present only when there is a tune. Where can one find a suitable and appropriate tune for the verse of regilaul that one has got in one's head? You cannot learn regilaul tunes from a songsheet - you need to look for them among what they call willow notes. As singer Toomas Köömel explained in 1913 to folksong researchers visiting Rannu village, Viru-Nigula parish: "These old songs didn't have no proper tune to them. They were sung just like that - to willow notes." When asked "What does that mean?", his answer was: "Well, this means that each singer has their own tunes and sings to them..." You can learn the willow notes when you go to a tree, stone, river or spring, on your own and without talking to anyone, and ask them to teach you a tune. If you know how to be very quiet, and open your heart, then a tune will start singing within you. Sing along to it and give your thanks to the place where you found the tune.

Estonian regilaul is an ancient and powerful means of communication for a headstrong nation with the rest of the world. To use it one needs to embrace timelessness and to picture in one's soul the two trails behind a sleigh heading towards the horizon. Next to each verse there is another one that takes you in the same direction in a slightly different manner. Each verse moves along its trail carried forward by words beginning with and containing similar sounds.

There have been occasions during courses on regilaul, of people sent out of the classroom for half an hour to find a tune to a proverb or a riddle, who returned, eyes sparkling and heads full of interesting and original tunes well worth teaching to others. One of the most amazing things is that it is often possible to recognise from such a tune the home place of the grandparents or even more remote forefathers of the tune's composer. In some strange way these tunes are preserved in the hearts of people, and if they dare to ask nature's help - trees, stones, the water around them - they can recover these tunes.

The willow notes probably contain the musical mother tongue of Estonians - the essence of regilaul that singers convey as they talk about the origins of their songs and tunes. In one song, a story is told about how a mother took her child's cradle out to the meadow and hung it on a birch branch, where cuckoos and summer birds would give their tunes to the child thus making him a bard. Many a song talks about nature through a human being and about human beings through nature. According to another song, an orphan goes to the grave of his parents on Midsummer's Night to ask for their advice and help. And the mother answers from the underworld: õhk sind õrnalt õpetagu, taevas tarka meelta andku (may the air teach you gently, may the sky give you wisdom). Birds and trees console those who are unhappy and try to set an example for them. A singer addresses his mind, senses and heart so that these will remain in motion and be ever merry. The perfect existence is that of a singing wanderer. If you walk your path without singing then this is an insult to the land, to meadows and forests and trees, and they show their disapproval of such a wanderer by taking away from him the power of moving on. The person who accompanies his walk with merry songs is given additional power and joy.

The feeling or understanding that music, tunes and songs connect us with the Universe is a common concept that Estonians share with their kindred nations, and with other peoples in Siberia, North America and Australia with a similar outlook on life. Land, roads and paths, and all the creatures of the world long for singing. If we forget to sing about them, they cannot give us their power and support. However, if we sing about them, they transmit to us the powers of the Universe that are a part of them.

Nowadays Estonians are not too keen on expressing their language and their ideas in song. Only two- or three-year-olds dare to let songs and words accompanied by music flow through themselves. When we get older, it seems that our ability to relate to music in our mother tongue disappears. As early as kindergarten and after that at school, we try to sing the "correct" way, the way other people sing. Many Estonian songs about the land, about trees and stones, are never sung by adults because their music teachers (whose education is based on foreign music) have told them in primary school that it is better not to sing such songs.

And yet our mother tongue, the language of our country, is the best way to share the power of the land, trees, forests and water. Our forefathers have nurtured this language and these musical ties by singing songs and by recording and transmitting them to others. The time has come for us to be ourselves: after half a century of occupation, we have our own State, our own local governments, schools and education system, and music schools. Let us be ourselves in all respects - including language, ideas and music. If we remain true to our identity, the spirits of the Land, Water and Forest will give our composers and singers the power to bring alive both ancient and modern songs in the minds of the people. The spiritual power of these songs is so great that our composers will win recognition and attention from all parts of the world. This way our forefathers, who were already making songs and prayers about us hundreds and thousands of years before we came into existence, should be happy and content. And we ourselves will be equally happy about the songs of generations to come in hundreds and thousands of years. These generations, however, need us to sing now so that the power of our songs may be strong enough to reach them in those future times.

The word laul (song) gives us the root of the word laulatus (wedding ceremony), i.e. a phenomenon that joins two persons to live and grow together.