Freedom and Song in Pictures

This year’s Embassy photo contest is in honor of U.S. Independence Day and Estonia’s Song Festival. We’re asking people what music, America and Estonia mean to them. It’s a question we posed to one of our summer interns Dmitri Lipovski.

“The Song Festival”

What does freedom and song bring to mind? Song festival.

What I picture when I think of the song festival are smiles. For Estonians the “Song Festival” holds a deep symbolic meaning: the culmination of the national awakening of Estonians, which started back in 1860.

It can be seen in their happy and proud faces when they go to the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds in their traditional clothing, waving flags. 

 

(Photo: AP Photo/Timur Nisametdinov, NIPA)

This happiness and joy transmits to other people very fast, so it is only a matter of time before you start smiling as happily as Estonians do. Honestly, it is a rare thing when you see people attending a celebration with so much happiness. For some people it’s more than a simple celebration with songs and dances, which takes place by tradition every five years. But for many Estonians it is much more than that. It is actually a moment that’s hard to describe, it has to be felt and experienced, like a smile.

What do you picture when you think of freedom and song in Estonia? Snap a photo and enter our photo competition. The deadline is 23:59 on June 24, 2014.

Post by Dmitri Lipovski