When I was in the fourth grade, we were assigned to do a project about a significant musical era or event. As everyone else was vying over the 60's and the British Invasion, I decided to get off the beaten path and look for something new.
At the same time, my parents had recently befriended a woman named Aive, a native of Estonia. When she heard about my project, she immediately suggested the Singing Revolution, which had occurred in her country when it was a part of the Soviet Union. Estonia was the first state to secede from the USSR, and it did so with no bloodshed-- instead, the people simply sang.
When I read the prompt for this journal assignment, this old project came to mind, and I rechecked the facts to make sure I remembered it correctly. The revolution began at a festival, and for four years, hundreds of thousands of Estonians gathered to sing illegal national songs. In 1991, they declared their independence, and while the shift of power was not necessarily smooth (it never is), no one was ever hurt.
Both in the fourth grade and today, the power of song and music over something as massive as peaceful establishment of an independent state amazes me. While the conflict in Israel-Palestine is clearly different than that of Estonia and the Soviet Union, I think that everyone, from individuals to nation-states can learn something from the Estonian people. They recognized the immense emotional sway music exercises on people and used it to unite an entire country peacefully. To have not lost a single life in a revolution is profound in a way that needs to be recognized and respected. I look forward to the date I check the news and that has replaced violence as the headlines.
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