Cassette Dreams of the Singing Revolution

Program note:

In 1992, my granduncle, Ilmar, gave me a cassette tape of songs of the Estonian Singing Revolution, a non-violent resistance movement centered around large-scale performances of choral and rock music, that led to Estonian independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. For months, distantly safe in my Bonny Doon, CA bedroom, I feel asleep to this tape. “Cassette Dreams of the Singing Revolution” draws from the music on this cassette tape, the warmly fuzzy, warped sound of a well-worn cassette tape (and its a gentle bed of hiss and static), the sounds of a forest creaking gently outside the window, and the intense feelings of an 11-year-old’s hope and connection to his motherland. Part lullaby and part analog mixtape, “Cassette Dreams of the Singing Revolution” is a distant but deeply felt expression of Estonian national identity.