PART FIVE
MODERN PAGANISM
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PAGANISM-INSPIRED FOLK MUSIC, FOLK MUSIC-INSPIRED
PAGANISM AND NEW CULTURAL FUSIONS IN LITHUANIA
AND LATVIA1
Michael F. Strmiska
Introduction
As the Baltic States of Lithuania and Latvia pass their twentieth anniversaries
of political independence from Soviet communism, both contemporary
folk music and modern Pagan religious movements draw
inspiration from earlier epochs of history. This is something deeper than
mere nostalgia. Throughout history, the Baltic peoples have struggled for
self-preservation against external threats, from colonising Germanic Crusaders
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to Tsarist, Nazi, and Soviet
domination in the nineteenth and twentieth.2
Each Baltic people has
its own memories of invasion, occupation and oppression, and lessons
learned about the necessity of maintaining cultural traditions against the
twin threats of extinction and assimilation. Therefore, the preservation
and further refijinement of earlier forms of folk music and Pagan religion
have immense emotional and political signifijicance in Latvia and Lithuania,
which is vividly expressed through the cultural product of Paganisminspired
folk music and related musical forms.
1
 The author would like to express his deep gratitude to the many people who provided
assistance at diffferent stages of research and writing. Particular thanks go to the
following individuals for their participation in interviews and email correspondence over
many years, as noted more fully in the bibliography: Romuva and Kulgrinda leaders Jonas
Trinkūnas and Inija Trinkūnienė; Žalvirinis member Ineta Meduneckytė-Tamosiūnienė;
the members of Atalyja; Dievturi leaders Oļģerts Tālivaldis Auns, now deceased, and
Jānis Siliņš; ethnomusicologist and kokles player extraordinaire Valdis Muktupāvels; Iļģi
founder Ilga Reizniece; Vilcenes member Inese Krūmiņa, wife of Vilki founding member
Jānis Krumiņš; Skyforger member Peter; and former Latvian President Vaira Viķe-Freiberga
(Vīķis-Freibergs).
2
 For a fijine single-volume overview of Baltic history, see Palmer (2005). For a compact
but well-informed tour of Lithuanian history, see Sužiedėlis (1997: 4–46). Concerning
Latvia, see Plakans (1995).
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352 michael f. strmiska
Historical Background
A distinctive feature of Baltic history with direct bearing on the musical
and religious phenomena discussed in this chapter is the long duration of
the region’s pre-Christian, indigenous religious traditions, and the consequently
late entry of the Baltic peoples into Christianised Europe.3
This
Christianisation occurred despite native resistance, by a combination of
Germanic missionary effforts, armed crusades, and commercial and cultural
colonisation. The tenacity of Baltic adherence to Pagan traditions in
the face of Germanic Christian colonisation caused historian Tiina Kala to
reflect with amazement;
[o]ne can ask how the local peoples actually managed to remain heathen
up until the thirteenth century. The Christian neighbors of the northern Baltic
lands were neither too weak to launch successful campaigns against the
heathens, nor were the local power-structures strong enough to organize
long-lasting resistance . . . [Although] little is known about the local preChristian
power structures . . . by the beginning of Christianization these
structures must have been considerably modest by comparison to those of
the Christian neighbors. Despite this, not only the actual conversion of the
indigenous rural population, but even the formal administrative incorporation
of these lands was a long and painful process lasting for decades, or
perhaps, even centuries (Kala 2001: 20).
The Christianisation of the region brought with it benefijits including the
development of the fijirst cities (the transformation of Riga, the capital city
of Latvia, from a small trading port to a substantial medieval city from
1201 CE), and the establishment of the fijirst universities (beginning with
Vilnius in 1569 CE), yet these benefijits came at the cost of a suppression
of indigenous culture, particularly traditional religion. For this reason,
the pre-Christian religions of the Baltic peoples remain cherished expressions
of indigenous culture and symbols of Baltic resistance to foreign
domination.
Portions of current-day Latvia and Estonia (medieval Livonia), were
brought into the Christian fold in the thirteenth century by the Germanic
crusading order, the Sword Brothers, with the rulers of Lithuania pro-
3
 Concerning Baltic mythology and religion (both Lithuanian and Latvian), see Biezais
(1987; 2004), Gimbutas (1963, 2001), Greimas (1992), and Puhvel (1974; 1987). Concerning
Lithuanian traditions, consult Beresnivičius (2000), Gimbutas (1974), and Vėlius (1989).
Concerning Latvian traditions, see Biezais (1972), Vīķis-Freibergs (1989) and Vīķe-Freiberga
(2004).
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 353
moting Christianisation in the late fourteenth century as a condition of
alliance with Catholic Poland in a struggle for survival against another colonising,
crusading order, the Teutonic Knights (Christiansen 1997; Urban
1989; Urban 1998; Urban 2000; Sužiedėlis 1997: 295–297; Murray 2001). To
the west of Lithuania, the threat of cultural extermination was painfully
illustrated by the fate of Baltic Prussia, now the Russian-controlled state
of Kaliningrad. Baltic Prussians’ distinctive language, culture and Pagan
religion disappeared after conquest by German Christians in the thirteenth
century and subsequent assimilation. In a cruel etymological and
historical irony, Prussia, the name of a non-German, Baltic society, would
become synonymous with a German empire (Sužiedėlis 1997: 233–235). In
this way, Baltic Prussia, Latvia, and Estonia all came under German Christian
domination in the thirteenth century (Plakans 1995: 1–29).
Facing the same threat of foreign domination, Lithuania transformed
into a militarily powerful, multi-ethnic and poly-religious state, the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania (Kiaupa and Kiaupienė 2000: 43–240; Mickūnaitė
2006). This expansionist state, “a Pagan empire within East-Central
Europe” (Rowell 1994), not only successfully resisted German conquest,
dealing an overwhelming defeat to the Sword Brothers in the Battle
of Saulė near the modern Lithuanian city of Šiauliai on 22 September
1236 CE (Sužiedėlis 1997: 260), but expanded eastwards throughout
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries through both conquests and
alliances.
Conflicts with the increasingly powerful Teutonic Knights caused
Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland to unite militarily and politically
against the common enemy in 1386 CE. The German threat was eliminated
in 1410 CE by a Lithuanian-Polish victory over the Teutonic Knights
at the battle of Grünwald (Žalgiris in Lithuanian, Tannenberg in German).
The Polish-Lithuanian alliance, sealed by the 1386 CE wedding of
the Polish Princess Hedwiga to the Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila, known
in Polish as Władyslaw Jagiełło II, evolved into one of the largest, most
powerful, and ethnically and religiously diverse states of medieval Europe,
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. As philosopher Dalia Marija
Stančienė reflects,
Lithuania is a multinational and multireligious country . . . without noticeable
internal ethnic and national conflicts. Independence constitutionally
established the equality of all nationalities and religious beliefs in the
country. But this was not something new for Lithuania; on the contrary, it
was a continuation of the old Lithuanian cultural and political tradition,
which, though interrupted for 50 years by the Soviets, survived deep in the
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354 michael f. strmiska
spirituality of the nation . . . As far back as the second part of the 16th century
Lithuania had become a center of religious tolerance in Europe. In 1563,
the Lithuanian parliament granted freedom of practice to all religious confessions
without exception . . . (Stančienė2008: 273–275).
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth dominated Eastern Europe until
internal divisions and political paralysis led to its dismemberment by Austria,
Prussia and Russia in three stages between 1764 and 1795 CE (Kiaupa
and Kiaupienė 2000: 241–357; Stone 2001).
Latvia, Estonia, Prussia, and western Lithuania were dominated by a
German Christian elite until the twentieth century, but Pagan customs
and traditions persisted in the rural regions beyond the urban centres.
Paganism likewise survived at the folk level in rural areas of Lithuania,
despite the process of Christianisation that was initiated when Lithuania
allied with Poland (Gimbutas 1958; 1963). Poland gradually claimed the
dominant position in the alliance, and the Lithuanian elite adopted Polish
language and culture, including Catholicism, as markers of status. Thus,
despite difffering experiences of foreign domination, Latvia and Lithuania
underwent a shared process of social bifurcation between a Christianised
ruling class that favoured Polish or German religion, language and culture
over indigenous traditions, and peasant classes who continued to practice
native forms of language, culture, and religion.
Ethnic Nationalism, Folk Music and Paganism in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
In the nineteenth century, the trends of ethnic nationalism and romantic
reappraisal of native peasant culture that sent shock waves across Europe
had a powerful efffect on the Baltic region as well. Arguably, these currents
had Baltic origins. The German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Herder
(1744–1803), one of the intellectual progenitors of nineteenth-century
nationalism and folklore studies, lived in Riga from 1764–1769 CE. During
his residence in Latvia, Herder was moved by Latvian folk music and singing,
partially inspiring his influential theory of an ethnic nation’s ‘folk-soul’
being expressed by native languages and indigenous folk arts, particularly
native forms of music. Herder praised the rough beauty and rustic profundity
of Latvian folk music in works including Stimmen der Völker in Lieder
(Voices of the Folk in Song, 1807), sparking interest in the collection and
study of folk music as touchstones of ethnic culture and national identity
across Europe, with important consequences in the Baltic region itself. As
Frederick M. Barnard observes,
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 355
[e]specially in Central and Eastern Europe his apotheosis of national
belonging, its necessity—if not sanctity—created an extraordinary stir, for
such rousing talk was clearly celestial music to nationalist ears. No wonder,
then, that Herder was acclaimed as the father of . . . national revival. Czechs,
Poles, Latvians, Slovenes and Ukrainians, as well as the slavophiles in Russia,
enthusiastically followed Herder’s call to resuscitate their hallowed traditions,
their ancient literatures, their folksongs and . . . their indigenous languages
(Barnard 2003: 13–14).
Nineteenth-century Baltic scholars preserved and popularised Latvian and
Lithuanian mythology, folklore, and folk music as a means of upholding
national identity against the political, cultural, and linguistic domination
of their respective countries by German, Polish, and Russian elites.
This collective cultural efffort became known as the ‘National Awakening’
in the Baltic States. Multiple volumes of Latvian and Lithuanian folk
songs were published. Krišjānis Barons’ monumental collection of Latvju
dainas (‘Latvian songs’) containing 217,996 folk songs was published in
six volumes between 1894 and 1915 (Trapāns 1989). Andrejs Jurjāns’ Latvju
tautas muzikas materiali (‘Latvian folk music materials’), also in six
volumes, appeared from 1894 to 1926. Jurjāns’ folk song collections also
included documentation and analysis of other Latvian folk customs and
folklore. Antanas Juška collected seven thousand Lithuanian folk songs,
which he organised into several volumes of Lietuviškos Dainos (‘Lithuanian
songs’), printed between 1880 and 1882, and a collection of traditional
wedding songs, Lietuviškos svodbinės dainos, published in 1880, along with
a study of wedding customs, Svotbinė Rėda (“Antanas Juška” 1980). Other
important Lithuanian collectors of dainos include Liudvikas Rėza (Dainos
oder Littausiche Volkslieder, 1825),4
Simonas Stanevičius (Dainos Zemaičiu
[‘Samogitian Songs’], 1829), and Adolfas Sabaliauskas, together with the
Finnish scholar Augustas Niemi (Lietuvių dainos ir giesmės šaurytineje
Lietuvojė [‘Lithuanian Songs and Chants from Northeastern Lithuania’],
1911, and Lietuvių dainų ir giesmių gaidos [‘Melodies of Lithuanian
Songs and Chants’], 1916) (Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė 2006). In addition to
celebrating the traditional Baltic worldview, Pagan mythology, and rural
life, Baltic folk songs also articulate social and political grievances of
disenfranchised groups, which added to their appeal and signifijicance
in this time (Ray 2003).
4
 “Rašytojai: Liudvikas Rėda.” Internet site, Rašyk.lt, http://www.rasyk.lt/rasytojai/liudvikasreza.html.
Accessed 18/12/2010.
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356 michael f. strmiska
With the rising tide of ethnic nationalism, the tables turned on the centuries-long
privileging of foreign culture over native tradition. The previously
despised Pagan myths, songs, and folklore were now applauded as
foundations of national identity. The new comparative linguistics established
that the Indo-European Baltic languages shared structural features
with the ancient Sanskrit tongue of India. Studies of Indo-Baltic parallels
further raised the stature of traditional Baltic culture (Chatterji 1968; Mallory
1989; Puhvel 1974; Puhvel 1987; Strmiska 2011). Timothy Snyder 2004:
96–97) notes that the nineteenth-century glorifijication of the Lithuanian
language as the closest philological relation to Sanskrit was a boost to
Lithuanian self-image in the Tsarist nineteenth century, and remained a
point of national pride throughout the Soviet period.
In the later nineteenth century, nationalistic pride in Latvian and Lithuanian
traditional culture, including folk songs and Pagan customs such as
solstice rituals, came into direct conflict with the Tsarist imperial policy of
Russifijication, which suppressed Baltic languages and traditions and promoted
Russian culture. Government agencies and educational institutions
enforced a Russian-only language policy. The Baltic peoples resisted Russifijication,
rallying behind national independence and cultural preservation
movements (Krapauskas 2000; Plakans 1995: 80–111; Valaniejus 2002;
and Zake 2007). Lithuanian nationalist newsletters such as Aušra (‘Dawn’)
and Varpas (‘The Bell’), published in defijiance of Tsarist policy in the late
nineteenth century, were both celebrations of ethnic culture and calls to
arms for independence (Stražas 1996).
After the collapse of the Tsarist Empire during World War I, Lithuanians
and Latvians saw their dream of political independence fulfijilled.
Lithuania and Latvia became internationally recognised, independent
states between 1918 and 1921 (von Rauch 1974: 49–75). From the Lithuanian
point of view, one sour note was the loss of Vilnius to Poland in 1920,
for which reason Lithuania’s second city of Kaunas was made the new
republic’s capital (von Rauch 1974: 79, 118–119; Sužiedėlis 1997: 317–318,
Venclova 2002: 55–60). Lithuania and Latvia’s hard-won independence
would prove short-lived. Within twenty years, the Baltic States found
themselves trapped between the aggressive intentions of German Fascism
and Soviet Communism. The Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement of 23
August 1939 opened the way to a series of alternating conquests; fijirst the
Soviets in 1939, then the Nazis in 1940, and then the Soviets again in 1945.
Each succeeding wave of occupation brought devastation, including the
mass extermination of Baltic Jews and the exile to Siberia of many of the
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 357
regions’ leading politicians and intellectuals (Eidintas 2002; Misiunas and
Taagepera 1983: 58–62; Šteimanis 2002; Sužiedėlis 1997: 139–143).
The defeat of the Nazis in 1945 brought not deliverance from oppression,
but the absorption of Lithuania and Latvia into the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics. Under this new, totalitarian colonialism, Russian
language and Soviet ideology were forced on Latvians and Lithuanians,
and native languages and traditions were once more out of favour (Misiunas
and Taagepera 1983: 74–125). To openly embrace native folk culture
could have serious repercussions. This happened to the university student
and future Romuva leader, Jonas Trinkūnas, in the late 1960s and early
1970s when offfijicial Soviet displeasure with his folklore-collecting and folk
song-performing activities cut his academic career short and required
Trinkūnas to take up various odd jobs for a time, including chiselling epitaphs
on gravestones, as Trinkūnas noted in several interviews with the
author (Trinkūnas, 1996; 2009).
The Singing Revolution
Under the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring)
introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s, the Soviet stranglehold
on social and cultural life in the disgruntled socialist republics was
relaxed enough to allow the spark of national pride to burst into defijiant
flame in the Baltics. As in the nineteenth century, enthusiasm for political
independence went hand-in-hand with pride in ethnic culture (Lieven
1994: 109–130; Dreifijields 1996; Čiubrinskas 2000). The importance of Baltic
folk music in the face of Soviet oppression has been eloquently stated
by the Latvian-Canadian professor of psychology and folklore, Vaire ViķeFreiberga,
later to become President of Latvia.
To the Latvian, the dainas are more than a literary tradition. They are the
very embodiment of his cultural heritage, left by forefathers whom history
had denied other, more tangible forms of expression. These songs thus form
the very core of the Latvian identity and singing becomes one of the identifying
qualities of a Latvian (Viķis-Freibergs [Viķe-Freiberga] 1975: 19).
Viķe-Freiberga’s words would prove prophetic. Among the most potent
and popular expressions of resurgent Baltic nationalism in the late 1980s
were national song festivals, in all three Baltic States, in which hundreds
of thousands of citizens joined together for exuberant mass celebrations
of national culture, singing once-suppressed native-language music,
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358 michael f. strmiska
ranging from ancient folk songs to Christian hymns, to popular tunes of
more recent vintage (Thomson 1992).
These musical demonstrations were no twentieth century innovation,
but the revival of a nineteenth century tradition of song festivals organised
to bolster national pride and protest against Tsarist oppression. Music
became a potent weapon of political protest in the mid to late 1980s, as
Daina Eglitis describes;
[i]n 1986, a song called Dzimta valoda [‘Mother Tongue’, literally, “language
of birth”] by the rock group Livi was hugely popular, in the words of one Latvian,
“a national anthem” of the time. The song reflected a shared concern
that the Latvian language was losing ground in Latvia and highlighted a primal
tie between language and life: “The language of my birth is my mother,”
went the refrain. That the song spoke to public grievances against the Soviet
regime was confijirmed when, in early 1987, the Latvian Communist Party
Central Committee issued a statement condemning the song’s selection as
the most popular song of 1986 (Eglitis 2002: 27).
The public expression of anti-Soviet, pro-Baltic sentiment reached a peak
on 23 August 1989, the fijiftieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
pact, when a combined total of two million Lithuanians, Latvians, and
Estonians joined hands to form a 373-mile human chain across the length
of the Baltic States in a peaceful protest known as “the Baltic Way” (Lieven
1994: 219). Though this event was not organised as a musical protest, it was
widely understood as an outgrowth of the song festival activities of preceding
years, and the ultimately successful drive for the Baltic States came
to be known as the ‘Singing Revolution’. The Baltic States were formally
granted independence by the disintegrating Soviet Union in August 1991.
The ‘Singing Revolution’ was successful, and to this day, folk song festivals
and singing competitions remain popular in all three Baltic States.
As has been demonstrated, traditional folk music played a key role
in mobilising ethnic nationalism in the Baltic States’ drive for independence
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The same is true of
religion. Indigenised versions of Christianity, such as Lithuanian Catholicism,
became vehicles of ethno-national identity, as did Pagan religious
customs, myths and beliefs, which were not long-buried relics, but still
vital elements of rural folklore, particularly in folk music. Pagan elements,
from references to native deities to a general deifijication of nature, are so
embedded in traditional Baltic folk songs that it is impossible to remove
them without destroying the cultural, spiritual, and artistic coherence of
the songs.
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 359
A sub-genre of Lithuanian and Latvian folk songs of particular interest
is dainas, performed at the summer and winter solstices in honour of
Saulė, the goddess of the sun. Here is one such Lithuanian mythological
daina, which pays tribute to the sun-goddess:
O little Saulė, Dievas’ daughter
Where have you been dwelling?
Where have you been straying?
Why have you left us alone?
I have kept shepherds warm,
I have shielded the orphans
Beyond the seas and mountains.
O little Saulė, Dievas’ daughter
Who kindled the fijires in the evening?
Who kindled the fijires in the evening?
Who made your bed for you?
O morning and evening star!
The morning star my fijire,
The evening star my bed.
Many kinsmen have blessed me,
And many are my treasures!5
(Landsbergis and Mills, 1964: 27–28).
In both Lithuanian and Latvian mythology, the sun goddess Saulė is one
of the chief deities, along with the sky-god Dievas (Dievs in Latvian), the
moon-god Mėnulis (Mēness in Latvian) and the thunder-god Perkūnas
(Pērkons in Latvian) (Gimbutas 2001; Vīķis-Freibergs and Freibergs 1978;
Vīķis-Freibergs 1989, Vīķe-Freiberga 2004). She drives a chariot across the
sky by day and returns by boat across the northern sea at night. Her brief
marriage to the unfaithful Mėnulis is unhappy, but Saulė delights in her
daughters. She dances with them in the sky on the eve of the summer solstice,
known in Lithuania as Kupolinės or Rasos, often anglicised as Rasa,
and in Christianised form as Joninės (Saint John’s Day), and in Latvia as
Līgo or Jāņi (also John the Baptist’s feast day in Christianised form). The
summer solstice celebrates her full strength and brilliance and the winter
solstice her rebirth from darkness, or alternately, the marriage of the sun’s
5
 The translation has been slightly altered to insert the actual Lithuanian names of
Saulė, the sun-goddess, and Dievas, the sky-god and creator-deity who is Saulė’s father in
Lithuanian mythology. The original translation represents Saulė as ‘little sun’ and Dievas
as ‘God.’
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360 michael f. strmiska
daughter and her return from the darkness, bringing light and warmth
back into the world.
Traditional Baltic solstice activities such as folk dancing, cooking and
eating special foods, playing games including dragging a Yule log from
house to house and visiting neighbours in disguise, and singing folk songs,
are all intended to rouse the winter sun to new life and energy, but also
served a political purpose in the Soviet era of rousing the Baltic peoples
against authorities bent on suppressing such assertions of ethnic identity.
Leaders in the two major Baltic Pagan revival movements, Romuva
in Lithuania and Dievturība in Latvia, were heavily involved in organising
solstice events. Romuva means ‘sanctuary’ or ‘peace’ in Lithuanian,
and Dievturība, which is often shortened to Dievturi, means “those who
keep faithful to Dievs” (the sky and creator god) in Latvian (Dundzila and
Trinkūnas 1999; Strmiska and Dundzila 2005; York 1995). Romuva, the
leading Pagan or ‘Baltic Native Faith’ association in Lithuania today, was
at this time known as Ramuva, supposedly a strictly folkloric organisation;
the declaration of its Baltic Pagan religious function coming only
after independence ended the need for such subterfuge (Dundzila 2008;
Strmiska 2005). In interviews, Romuva leader Jonas Trinkūnas and Dievturi
leader Oļģerts Tālivaldis Auns told how they created a network of
folklore enthusiasts and political activists in both Soviet republics in the
late 1980s to organise joint Latvian-Lithuanian summer solstice festivities,
which were arranged in an underground manner to avoid Soviet police
detection, possible arrest, and interrogation (Trinkūnas and Auns 2002).
In recognition of his service to Lithuania through these activities, Auns, a
Latvian, was presented with the Offfijicer’s Cross Award by the President of
Lithuania in June 2004.6
After 1991, with the threat of Soviet persecution removed, the solstice
gatherings were acknowledged as national holidays. Attending the summer
1998 Rasa celebration at the ancient site of Kernavė in Lithuania, the
author could not fail to be impressed by the exuberance of the singing,
dancing, and sharing of food and drink by many thousands of Lithuanians.
As the midsummer night grew dark, flaming wagon wheels representing
the temporarily absent sun were mounted on poles or rolled down hills,
matching the energy of the raucous Lithuanian revellers.
6
 Internet site, http://paksas.president.lt/ordinai/table_e.phtml. Accessed 18/12/10. Oļģerts
Tālivaldis Auns passed away on 3 November 2010, with Jonas Trinkūnas’ remembrance of
his friend at http://blog.delfiji.lt/jonastrinkunas/7970/. Accessed 18/12/2010.
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 361
The Pagan solar symbolism of the Rasa ceremonies was expressed on
multiple levels, from the songs referring to Saulė to the blazing wheels to
circle dances in which spinning couples represented the turning of the
sun. Many participants were Catholics untroubled by these Pagan associations.
This relaxed coexistence of the Christian and the non-Christian
is another example of how Pagan religion, folk music and national pride
are interwoven in Lithuanian culture and society, as in Latvia. Catholic
Lithuanians, Lutheran Latvians, and other Baltic Christians may not fully
endorse the nature-centered spirituality inherent in the solstice celebrations,
or the Pagan mythology in cherished dainas, but they value them
as elements of national culture and ethnic tradition. At the same time,
and possibly singing the very same song or spinning in the same dance,
there are Latvians and Lithuanians who have taken the Pagan spirituality
of the occasion as their religious path, including but not limited to the
members of Romuva and Dievturi. Two other groups are those who may
combine together or alternate between Christianity and Paganism, with
no concern for doctrinal distinctions or theological niceties, and those
who have no religious afffijiliation but who enjoy folkloric activities because
they are exciting and fun. Over and above all of these diffferent dimensions
of meaning there is the overarching and unitary one of shared ethnic
pride and national identity.
Paganism-Inspired Folk Music and Folk Music-Inspired
Paganism in Lithuania
In the twenty years since gaining independence in 1991, Baltic Paganism
and music have remained intertwined in both Lithuania and Latvia. Jonas
Trinkūnas and his wife, the gifted folk singer Inija Trinkūnienė, are leaders
of both the Romuva religious movement and also the folk music ensemble
Kūlgrinda, formed in 1989 and dedicated to researching, recording and
performing traditional Lithuanian songs rooted in Lithuanian Pagan heritage
(Trinkūnas 1996; Trinkūnas 1998; Trinkūnas 2002; Trinkūnas 2004;
Trinkūnas and Trinkūnienė 2009). Romuva, as observed earlier, means
‘peace’ or ‘sanctuary,’ originally denoting a Pagan temple in Baltic Prussia
prior to the forced Christianisation of the region. Kūlgrinda translates
as ‘hidden path or road,’ referring to secret underwater roads in swampy
regions used by Pagan Lithuanians in their battles against invaders in the
medieval era. Modern Romuva is therefore a sanctuary for those seeking
to understand and practice Baltic Paganism, and Kūlgrinda is a path
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362 michael f. strmiska
through music to such understanding and practice. There is no absolute
distinction between Romuva’s religious activities and Kūlgrinda’s musical
ones. Romuva gatherings on the solstices and other seasonal events feature
the singing of traditional songs that are also performed by Kūlgrinda.
Kūlgrinda has recorded a series of compact discs of song cycles related to
Lithuanian Paganism that have become ‘musical scriptures’ for Romuva
members. Kūlgrinda can be understood as the musical manifestation of
Romuva.
Inija Trinkūnienė has lectured and published on Baltic Paganism (2005).
As the co-leader of Kūlgrinda, Trinkūnienė specialises in the archaic polyphonic
song-chants called sutartinės, in which several singers vocalise
diffferent melodic parts in interlocking patterns of great complexity, in
intricate tapestries of woven sound. These chants become increasingly
powerful and hypnotic through rhythmic repetition. Lithuanian musicologist
Daiva Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė has commented on the intriguing parallels
between sutartinės and weaving.
The interweaving of the two independent melodies is reminiscent of the
process of weaving, during which the heddles dive one after another: at one
moment rising up to view, at another sinking out of sight. It is this constant
change that creates the multicolored cloth, too. The melody of a sutartinė
sung with a meaningful text is called rinkinis (from the verb rinkti, “to collect;
to select, to choose; to create”), while the refrain is called pritarinis
(from the verb pritarti, “to approve, to agree with; to accompany”) . . . Interestingly,
some of the traditional names for the sutartinė’s voice parts have
corresponding weaving (plaiting) terms: there is a rinktinė sash, rinktiniai
cloth or just rinkiniai (rinkinys is a patterned or multicolored cloth). In traditional
thought, rinkimas is associated with the collection or creation of
woven patterns, i.e., the technology of weaving patterned cloth. According
to archaic mythological thought, all creative processes organized by strict
rules, including singing, dancing, weaving, and plaiting, are perceived as a
form of magic that transforms chaos into cosmic harmony. Therefore, the
text of the sutartinė and the concept of the melody’s selection and harmony
dovetails with a specifijic canonized understanding of musical “order,” that is,
coherence (Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė 2006).
Kūlgrinda’s recordings are generally straightforward folk performances
without much studio enhancement, focusing on the vocals of Jonas and
Inija either as soloists or enhanced by Kūlgrinda backing singers. The singing
is unpolished and direct, raw and powerful, eschewing the sometimessterile
manner of academic folk musicians. The sparse instrumentation is
usually restricted to traditional Lithuanian folk instruments, most notably
the enchanting zither-like or harp-like stringed instrument known as the
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kanklės. The kanklės is known in Latvia as the kokles and has analogues
in the kannel of Estonia, and the kanteles of Finland and Karelian Russia.
Latvian ethnomusicologist and kokles player Valdis Muktupāvels (2000a;
2000b) has written on these related instruments. Occasional drums, violin
and panpipes complete the sonic landscape, but the main focus is always
the vocals.
Kūlgrinda records are organized on themes of Pagan religious and/
or ethno-historical signifijicance, with all songs drawn from the corpus of
Lithuanian folk music. The 2002 disc Ugnies Apeigos (‘Rite of Fire’) is a
musical textbook of Lithuanian Paganism, with bilingual Lithuanian-English
liner notes explaining such matters as the use of fijire in Baltic Native
Faith rituals, the various layers of meaning in the deceptively simple dainos,
and which gods are honored with which songs. In 2003 Kūlgrinda
released Perkūno Giesmės (‘Hymns of Perkunas’), a song-cycle dedicated
to the Lithuanian god of thunder, strength, and wisdom. This was followed
in 2005 by Prūsų Giesmės (‘Prussian Hymns’), a collection of folk songs in
the extinct Prussian language that paid tribute to this lost branch of Baltic
indigenous culture. In 2007, Kūlgrinda released Giesmės Saulei (‘Hymns
to the Sun’), with songs to the goddess Saulė, and in 2009, another more
historically-oriented work, Giesmės Valdovui Gediminas (‘Hymns to King
Gediminas’), a tribute to Grand Duke Gediminas (reigned 1316–1341 CE),
who is remembered as one of the most illustrious of medieval Lithuanian
rulers (Sužiedėlis 1997: 119–121). This alternation between explicitly religious
and historical subject matter reinforces the importance of ethnonational
consciousness to both Lithuanian Paganism and Lithuanian folk
music.
Kūlgrinda has also collaborated with other musicians for recording
projects that have expanded their musical horizons. Perhaps their fijinest
such efffort is Sotvaras (2002), a winter solstice song-cycle created with
Donatas Bielkauskas, a musician who records under the name Donis.
Entirely diffferent musically from Kūlgrinda, Donis tends toward ambient,
electronic, and industrial styles of contemporary popular music. Sotvaras
is best summarised as a typical Kūlgrinda collection of traditional folk
music augmented by ambient sound-textures tastefully applied by Donis.
The result is a beautiful, melancholy recording that is primarily folk music
but also something more. Donis is a prolifijic artist, and of his many projects,
mention must be made of his collaboration with Darius Gerulaitis
in the band Wejdas. The two began working together in the mid-1990s,
and have released such recordings as Wejdas (1997) and the 2004 Žemės
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364 michael f. strmiska
Alsavimas (‘Breathing Earth’). While working in a ambient, electronic vein
emphasising synthesizers and computer programming, Wejdas incorporates
a Pagan sensibility by sampling and manipulating sounds of natural
elements like birdsong and flowing water, with lyrics that hint at transcendence
in the natural world. The music of Wejdas shows that a Pagan
worldview can be manifested through computerised electronica, as well
as dainos and kanklės.
In 2010, Donis released Kas Tave Šaukia . . . (‘What Calls You?’), timed
to coincide with the six hundredth anniversary of Lithuania’s victory over
the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of Grünwald (Lithuanian Žalgiris) in
1410 CE. In this majestic work, Donis takes the Lithuanian sub-genre of
traditional war songs, many of which are mournful reflections on the passing
away of brave young warriors, and accentuates their emotional depth
with lush arrangements combining folk and rock instruments from Lithuanian
bagpipes (dūda) to kanklės and electric guitar, as well as a classical
string section and assorted electronica. The vocalist is the acclaimed Rasa
Serra, who also appeared on an earlier Donis recording exploring Lithuanian
military-historical folk songs, Bite Lingo (2006). Serra has also sung
with Kūlgrinda.
In the early 2000s, several younger female members of Kūlgrinda,
including Rimgailė Trinkūnaitė, daughter of Jonas Trinkūnas and Inija
Trinkūnienė, became friendly with young men involved in a heavy metal
band, Ugnėlakis. Socialising in Vilnius pubs, they would often sing folk
songs, with the Ugnėlakis players occasionally adding guitar, violin, or
other instruments.7
These jam sessions inspired a project called Žalvarinis
(‘Brass’), a name with folkloric and historic signifijicance as a metal valued
in ancient Lithuania for jewellery and other items. The resulting recording,
credited to both Ugnėlakis and Kūlgrinda, was entitled Žalvarinis. Traditional
Lithuanian folk songs, both dainos and sutartinės, were given a hard
rock treatment, trading in the gentle, tinkling sound of the kanklės for raucous
electric guitar, but with a vocal style much like that of Kūlgrinda.
The disc received an enthusiastic response, and the one-offf experiment
became an ongoing project. Žalvarinis is now a popular band applying
rock dynamics to Lithuanian traditional music. Guitarist and arranger
Robertas Semeniukas leads a line-up of three female vocalists, two guitarists
(including himself), and a rock rhythm section of bass and drums.
Other Žalvarinis releases to date are the 2005 Žalio Vario (‘Raw Copper’),
7
 Ineta Meduneckytė-Tamosiūnienė (Žalvirinis member), pers. comm, December 2010.
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 365
and Folk’n’Rock (2008). Žalio Vario both nods to the ‘metal’ theme of the
group’s name and its origins in heavy metal, and refers to a traditional
warrior song (also performed by Donis on his Kas Tave Šaukia . . . ) that
gives the disc its name. ‘Žalio Vario’ is in fact the very same traditional
song that Donis cites as ‘Kas Tave Šaukia’. The two diffferent titles derive
from the fijirst line of this song, “Kas tave šaukia, žalio vario?” (“What calls
you, raw copper?”), with ‘raw copper’ a metaphor for the young soldier
called to battle in the fateful days of the Baltic Crusades. Žalvarinis has a
substantial following in Lithuania, appearing on fijilm and television and
winning a number of awards, and has also performed to acclaim at festivals
in Estonia and Latvia.8
Žalvarinis’ method of updating and popularising traditional music with
a hard rock approach may not please folk purists, but it represents an
important bridge between tradition and modernity with great appeal to
younger Lithuanians. Such hybridisation and popularisation has not met
with universal acclaim, as is attested in the following thoughtful critique
by the sutartinės scholar Daiva Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė.
In recent years, the question of the preservation or extinction of authentic
folklore (and consequently the sutartinė) in today’s culture has frequently
been considered . . . I do not believe that the sutartinė has to become a part
of popular culture, a cheap ware offfered to the young in “their own musical
language.” When the sutartinė lands in the pop music grinder, it speaks to
the listener only in the language of pop music, and in the meantime the
chants themselves are silent. You can feel this while listening to folk-rock
groups like “Žalvarinis” or “Atalyja.” . . . There are other artistically valuable
forms of spreading the sutartinė in the modern world. This could be the
combination of authentic performance with visual or applied arts, pantomime,
etc. The archaic incantation of the sutartinė combined with modern
art should be interesting and attractive to today’s viewer . . . the sutartinė
should sound “the highest note” in today’s culture—it should become one
of the most striking symbols of Lithuanian spiritual culture. (RačiūnaitėVyčinienė,
2006).
Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė’s concern that the integrity of traditional musical
and cultural forms not be sacrifijiced on the transient altar of modern popular
culture is a dilemma that faces attempts to combine the art forms
of folk tradition with those of the post-traditional, post-modern present.
Yet, while Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė might seem to be an arch-conservative
opposed to all modernisation of traditional art forms, she ends by
8
 Internet site http://www.frype.lt/zalvarinis. Accessed 21/12/2010.
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366 michael f. strmiska
advocating even more radical and experimental, mixed-media approaches
to old-new cultural fusion. Her main complaint is not that Žalvarinis has
dared to modernise the sutartinė, but that the efffort is, in her view, simple
and crude. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that Robertas Semeniukas and
Žalavarinis have succeeded in rendering traditional music more appealing
to a youthful audience that might otherwise gravitate toward nonLithuanian,
non-traditional, global pop.
Atalyja, another band mentioned by Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė, has also produced
a series of striking recordings that blend together traditional and
popular genres. While Žalvarinis has mainly grafted heavy metal guitar
and rock and roll energy onto sutartinės and other traditional Lithuanian
forms, Atalyja employs a lighter touch with a somewhat more eclectic
sonic and stylistic palette, with occasional forays into jazz. Atalyja uses traditional
Lithuanian instruments like kanklės and panpipes with acoustic
and electric guitar, violin, bass, and drums, while also making use of Indian
instruments, such as Indian flute and tablas. Like Žalvarinis, Atalyja has
a trio of female singers and one male vocalist. The band’s recorded work
consists of the albums Atalyja (‘Falling Rain’) in 2001, Močia (‘Mother’) in
2004, and Saula riduolėla (‘Sun the Roller’) in 2009, and the shorter-length
Žemaitiu Ruoks (2008).
Atalyja had its beginnings in the autumn of 1998. Founding members
Gediminas Žilys and Eirimas Velička were inspired by the groundbreaking
Latvian folk-rock band Iļģi, discussed below, to develop a new style
that would “connect Lithuanian folk music with modern instruments
and styles. Our aim is to present the beauty, deepness and uniqueness of
Lithuanian folk songs, especially the sutartinės, the ancient Baltic worldview
and life philosophy.”9
Asking about the religious afffijiliations of the
band, the author was told in email correspondence, “some of us are
members of Traditional Baltic Faith community [Romuva], some of us
are Christians, and a few are interested in the philosophy and spirituality
of Hindu tradition.”
The joining together in Atalyja of Pagans, Christians, and students of
Indian religion illustrates the multiple perspectives with which Lithuanians
engage with their folk traditions. The Pagan associations of the
old songs may function as spiritual touchstones for some, but for others,
the Paganistic veneration of nature and references to deities in the
dainos and sutartinės function more as cultural signposts of Lithuanian
9
 Members of Atalyja, pers. comm, November 2010.
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 367
traditions than as statements of religious dogma. Atalyja’s Indian interests,
as reflected both in the religious viewpoints of several members and
the use of Indian instruments, is also to be found among other Lithuanian
musicians and artists and among the general population, with much the
same in Latvia, echoing the nineteenth century fascination with IndoBaltic
connections.
Ernestas Jepifanovas, a member of Atalyja, also appears on Bitinėlio
Raga (‘Bee Raga’), a 2004 disc in which the renowned Lithuanian folk
singer Veronika Povilionienė collaborates with Jepifanovas and other
members of an Indian music ensemble, Lyla, to add Indian spice to
Lithuanian song forms including the sutartinė. Povilionienė, a champion
of Lithuanian ethnic culture and recipient of multiple awards, has also
experimented with jazz, as documented in the 1992 disc Išlėk, Sakale (‘Fly,
Falcon, Fly’) (re-released 2006), again illustrating the receptivity of contemporary
Lithuanian folk musicians to other musical forms. Povilionienė
also recorded a disc of war songs, akin to Donis’ Kas Tave Šaukia . . ., entitled
Kada Sūneliai Sugrįš (‘When Our Sons Come Back’) in 2006.
With the rise to prominence of bands and musicians like Žalvarinis,
Atalyja and Donis, the term ‘folk music’ has become increasingly inadequate
to describe the more eclectic, experimental, and hybridised musical
paths pursued by the younger generation of musicians who are inspired,
but not limited, by folk music. The term ‘post-folk music’ is now in use to
designate these new directions. Mention should also be made of Pievos
(‘Meadow’), another fijine Lithuanian post-folk band with Pagan leanings,
led by singer and poet Virginija Skeirienė. The band’s name reflects their
musical approach of gentle, melodic folk-rock. Pievos’ two recordings
are 2007’s Mėnuli Baltas (‘White Moon’), and 2010’s Papraustas Pasaulis
(‘Ordinary World’).
It was previously noted that Žalvarinis began as a collaboration between
heavy metal musicians from Ugnėlakis and folk singers from Kūlgrinda.
There are also other ‘metal’ bands in Lithuania that make Pagan themed
music, but with less direct connection to folk music than Žalvarinis and
the aforementioned post-folk bands, and more of an emphasis on the
fijierce guitar and pounding rhythms typical of heavy metal. Such Baltic
Pagan metal bands have clearly been inspired by the ‘black metal,’ ‘Pagan
metal,’ ‘folk metal’ and ‘Viking metal’ subgenres of European heavy metal
that gained popularity in the early 1990s (Harris 2000: 13–30; Kurtagić
2010:1–10; Moynihan and Søderlind 2003; Purcell 2003). Stylistic diffferences
aside, these subgenres share an interest in Pagan mythology and history,
viewed as both a romantic alternative to, and a tragic victim of, modern
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368 michael f. strmiska
European civilisation. The angry, defijiant energy of the music explodes
against a sombre background of enveloping darkness and despair, with a
whispered hope of rebirth amidst the desolation. All of these fijit perfectly
with the Baltic cultural landscape with its intense pride in ethnic traditions,
including pre-Christian Pagan religion, and common experience of
painful resistance to foreign domination.
While post-folk musicians mainly apply themselves to reinterpreting
traditional folk songs, what might be termed ‘pouring old mead into new
bottles’, Baltic Pagan metal groups do not generally perform folk songs, but
take mythological and historical subject matter common to such songs as
inspiration for new works. Thus, while Atalyja or Žalvarinis might provide
a new musical interpretation of a traditional daina to Saulė or Perkūnas,
a Baltic Pagan metal band is more likely write new songs about these
deities. Influential Lithuanian Baltic Pagan metal bands include Poccolus,
Zpoan Vtenz, Obtest, and Andaja. Poccolus was one of the fijirst Baltic
Pagan metal bands, founded in 1993 and gaining a lasting reputation with
its only full-length album, released in 1996, also titled Poccolus. The band
is named for Poccolus, the god of fertility and death of the extinct Prussian
Balts. In Lithuanian mythology, Poccolus is the chthonic god Velnias,
later identifijied with the Christian devil (Gimbutas 1974).
The songs on Poccolus conjure a mysterious world of magical nature
and tragic destiny, typical of Baltic Pagan metal music. The listener is
immersed in a dark world of ominous forests, howling wolves, blazing
fijires, poisonous snakes, and screeching owls, reminded of the deeds of
heroic warriors, and invited to mystical encounters with transcendent
powers. Poccolus’ lyrics are not straightforward Pagan hymns, but evoke
a quasi-Pagan or ‘Paganistic’ atmosphere. Poccolus’ sound is hard-driving
metal softened by occasional acoustic guitar, keyboards, and electronica,
with a melancholy undertone not unlike that of Kūlgrinda’s Solvaras collaboration
with Donis. The Poccolus album has remained sufffijiciently popular
to be re-released in 2006, and a 1994 demo tape was repackaged into
a new release, Ragana, in 2009.
Guitarist, keyboardist and vocalist Ramūnas (Mūnis) Peršonis, the
leader of Poccolus, also founded another Baltic Pagan metal band, Zpoan
Vtenz, which also recorded only one album, 1998’s Gimę Nugalėt (‘Born
to Conquer’). The musical approach is more varied, with plentiful use of
synthesizer and keyboards that provide a mournful, ambient accompaniment
to the usual hard-grinding electric guitar. Some songs are sung
by Peršonis in a low-pitched, ultra-masculine manner, others by Vilma
Čiplytė, a trained folk singer with a beautiful voice. Sadly, Čiplytė passed
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 369
away in 2009, which compromised the future of the band. The songs are
not original compositions but traditional dainos, with an explicit intention
of creating a bridge between folk tradition and metal-electric modernity.
For this reason, Gimę Nugalėt may be classifijied as a folk-metal or post-folk
album, showing again the limited utility of these genre distinctions.
Gimę Nugalėt is a collection of Lithuanian war songs, mining the same
military-historical folkloric vein as the aforementioned Donis and Veronika
Povilionienė discs. The persistent reinterpretations of this sub-genre by
contemporary musicians is not only a tribute to the lasting appeal of these
often sorrowful songs and a powerful expression of Lithuanian nationalism,
but also an indication of Lithuanians’ lingering sense of trauma from
the German, Russian, and Soviet occupations, and continuing anxiety
over their country’s vulnerability to foreign domination. Though Lithuania’s
membership of NATO has provided some security against the everpresent
possibility of Russian invasion, the threat remains, and inclusion
in the European Union has occasioned both enthusiasm at being accepted
into modern Europe and apprehension about the extent to which external
economic and cultural influences may erode Lithuanian sovereignty
and cultural identity. Therefore, these war songs, many of which refer to
the tragic fate of the Baltic Prussians, whose extermination represents
the ‘worst case scenario’ for all Baltic peoples, remain highly resonant
even now. The constant alternation between mythological and historical
themes in the music of post-folk and Pagan metal groups illustrates
another important point. Pagan religious elements are so interwoven with
Lithuanian ethnic nationalism in this music that while the two can be
distinguished for purposes of academic analysis, they cannot be separated
in lived reality. The same holds true in Latvia, as will be seen.
Obtest, another prominent Baltic Pagan metal band, was founded in
1992. Of all the bands surveyed in this chapter, Obtest is probably the one
most devoted to a strictly heavy metal guitar approach, eschewing any
use of alternative instrumentation that might lessen the ‘metal quotient’
of the music. This gives Obtest’s music a relentless, rumbling consistency
animated by hoarse, urgent vocals and fast-slashing lead guitar. Obtest’s
songs engage with the usual themes of Baltic Pagan metal: nature mysticism,
warrior valour, tragic death, and references to Lithuanian gods
and history, with an overall sense of foreboding. In the group’s fourth
and most recent recording, 2008’s Gyvybės Medis (‘Tree of Life’), nature is
alive, with wolves howling, hawks circling, ravens soaring, black stallions
charging, and oak trees rooted in rich black soil watered by the blood of
fallen warriors. Mythological references include Medeinė, goddess of trees
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370 michael f. strmiska
and forests, and Velinas, another name for the underworld and death
god, Velnias. The legend of the founding of the city of Vilnius from the
Grand Duke Gediminas’ dream of an iron wolf is recounted in ‘Geležinas
Vilkas’ (literally, ‘Iron Wolf’, but translated on the liner notes as ‘The
Wolf of Steel’).
The album opens with ‘Apeigos’ (‘Rites’), which invites the listener to
undergo an agonising spiritual transformation, with such lyrics as: “The
wound is gaping, blood flows freely . . . Is this a prayer or is it a journey
from which no man will ever return? . . . Rise up in flames from enchantments
and spells . . . Darkened eyes shine from purest wells… Hands spread
like sycamore branches embracing all life.” The fijinal song ‘Tai Ne Pabaiga’
(‘This is Not the End’) also describes a ritual, this time a funeral feast, with
the grim but defijiant conclusion, “Silence will pass, the wisdom ripened in
tears/We are all as one, when are all embraced by death/This is the fijinal
journey for my body, but still this is not the end.” Obtest provides English
translations of all songs, which points to the band’s ambition to reach an
international audience while remaining grounded in Lithuanian culture
and history and devoted to Lithuanian Paganism.
The fijinal Lithuanian Pagan Metal band that will be considered in this
chapter is Andaja. Formed in 2002 by Lithuanian musicians who had formerly
played in Kūlgrinda, Ugnėlakis, Žalvarinis, Poccolus, and Obtest, the
band is named for a shadowy Lithuanian goddess of fate associated with
swamps and bogs, which were key sites of ritual in ancient times. Andaja’s
2006 recording Įš Atminties (‘From Memory’) indicates the band’s purpose
of retrieving knowledge and wisdom from the dark swamps of collective
memory, from the Pagan traditions of the Baltic past. Their lyrics allude
to Lithuanian gods including Perkūnas, Velnias, and Andaja, striking the
standard Pagan metal chords of magical nature, ominous darkness, fijire,
blood, death, defijiance and the hope of renewal. Andaja’s music features
an intense guitar sound, approaching the grinding roar of Obtest but with
more variety in tempo and style. Occasional keyboards add further texture,
and the closing instrumental tune on the disc features not an electric
guitar, but a Lithuanian dūda (bagpipe), ending the recording on a
distinctly folkish note and underlining their devotion to Lithuanian traditional
culture.
To conclude this section on Lithuania, it is evident that primarily
folkloric bands like Kūlgrinda, post-folk groups like Atalyja, Pievos and
Žalvarinis, ambient-electronic ensembles like Wejdas, and Pagan Baltic
metal bands like Andaja and Obtest contribute to a broad panorama of
musical activity, from the highly traditional to the experimental, united
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 371
by an underlying commitment to upholding the Pagan elements of traditional
Lithuanian culture. The importance of Jonas Trinkūnas and Inija
Trinkūnienė in both promoting Baltic Native Faith as a religion through
Romuva, and in fostering appreciation for the Pagan dimension of traditional
Lithuanian folk music through Kūlgrinda, cannot be overestimated.
It is striking how many of the musicians included in this survey have some
connection with Kūlgrinda, which has served as something of a Pagan
music ‘university’ for many young Lithuanians. Summer folklore camps
operated by Romuva are further evidence of the Trinkūnases’ unceasing
effforts to educate younger Lithuanians, and also emigrant Lithuanians who
are encouraged to attend, about the Pagan roots of Lithuanian culture. For
his work to promoting Lithuanian folk culture over several decades, Jonas
Trinkūnas received the high honour of the Jonas Basanavičius Award for
activities in the fijield of ethnic culture from the Lithuanian Ministry of
Culture in 1997.
Paganism-Inspired Folk Music and Folk Music-Inspired
Paganism in Latvia
In Latvia there are parallels to the Lithuanian situation and some interesting
diffferences as well. As with Romuva in Lithuania, there is a wellestablished
Pagan religious association, Dievturi, yet this organisation has
not given rise to a musical counterpart like Kūlgrinda. This is partly a
function of the diffferent time frame in which modern Latvian Pagan religion
is operating. While Romuva in its current incarnation, and Kūlgrinda,
took root in the late Soviet period and then blossomed after independence,
Dievturi has much earlier origins, dating back to the interwar
period preceding the long nightmare of Nazi invasion and Soviet occupation
(Misāne 2000; Krūmiņa-Koņkova 1999). The founder of Dievturība
in that time, Ernests Brastiņš (1892–1942), is long since departed, thus
foreclosing any possibility of Dievturi’s original leadership creating a contemporary
musical group as happened with Romuva and Kūlgrinda. The
singing of Latvian dainas of mythological nature and the playing of the
Latvian koklės did however play a role in Dievturi gatherings (Strmiska
2005; Muktupāvels 2005a).
In Latvia as in Lithuania, the late 1980s saw a folk music revival that
marched hand in hand with the political movement for national independence
and surging pride in Latvian ethnic culture, including its Pagan
traditions. One of the fijirst and most important Latvian folk music groups
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372 michael f. strmiska
in this period was Skandinieki, founded in 1976 by Dainis and Helmi Stalts
and still active in the twenty-fijirst century, with further generations of the
Stalts family involved. Combining traditional Latvian and Livonian folk
songs and instruments with a choral approach utilizing up to forty voices
singing in a polyphonic style reminiscent of a Russian folk choir, Skandinieki
has been an extremely influential presence on the Latvian folk
scene (Muktupāvels 2011). This family-based ensemble has dedicated itself
to preserving the musical traditions of the Livonians, a once-populous but
now vanishing ethnic group with a Finno-Ugric language unrelated to Lat-
vian.10
The simple, unadorned production and minimal instrumentation
resembles the musical approach of Kūlgrinda. The two most recent Skandinieki
recordings are Dzied un spēlē Skandinieki (‘Sing and Play Skandinieki’),
a selection of Latvian folk music from diffferent regions recorded
in 2003, and Veļu upe pārplūdus’ (‘The River of Spirits is Overflowing’), a
collection of traditional funeral songs from 2006.11
With many Latvian dainas celebrating the natural world, marking the
cycle of seasons, and evoking the Pagan gods, Skandinieki has elevated
knowledge of Latvian folk culture and of Latvian Pagan mythology. Inese
Krūmiņa, a Latvian Pagan friend of the author, whose own musical and
folkloric contributions are discussed below, noted, “Every single song they
sing is fijilled with pre-Christian worldview—so in some kind—if they
aren’t saying they’re Pagans, they’re singing it out every time they open
their mouths” (Krūmiņa 2011).
Two musicians who rose to prominence as performers in Skandinieki
would play important roles in further promoting the Pagan elements of
Latvian folk music. In the 1980s, Valdis Muktupāvels joined Skandinieki as
a graduate student in ethnomusicology specialising in folk music genres
and particularly the kokles, the Latvian equivalent of the Lithuanian
kanklės.12
Ilga Reizniece came to Skandinieki as a conservatory-trained
violinist who shifted her focus toward Latvian folk music.13
Academic posi-
10
 A touching reflection on the dwindling of the Livonian population in Latvia is provided
in Specter (1997).
11
 Thoughtful and informative English-language reviews of Latvian music recordings are
available at the Latvians Online website. See Kaljo (2004) and Jātniece (2007).
12
 Valdis Muktupāvels’ biography online, http://www.music.lv/mukti/cv.htm. Accessed
29/12/2010.
13
 Ilga Reizniece and Iļģi English-language information online at http://ilgi.lv/en_biografijija
.php, with original Latvian text available at http://ilgi.lv/lv_biografijija.php. Accessed
29/12/2010.
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 373
tions provided them with protection from the political persecution that
often befell promoters of ethnic culture, thus Muktupāvels and Reizniece
began their own folk music projects.
Muktupāvels went on to form a group, Ensemble Rasa, which performed
Latvian summer and winter solstice songs using traditional instruments
and singing styles. After independence, the ensemble recorded an album
of these songs entitled Latvia-Music of Solar Rites/Lettonie-Musique des
rites solaires. This was a landmark recording, issued fijirst in cassette form
in 1993 and then as a compact disc in 1995. Muktupāvels’ bilingual French/
English liner notes provided an introduction to Latvian dainas and solstice
rites and the Pagan mythology of Saule and other deities, distinguishing
native Latvian religion and mythology from Christianity, a foreign faith
imposed by a German minority. The notes also explained Latvian instruments
and singing styles. Traditional wedding, orphan, and funeral songs
were interwoven with the Jāņi and Līgo songs to create a single song-cycle
tracing both the arc of the year from spring to summer to winter and the
life-cycle of an individual person from youth to marriage to death. Though
the words ‘Pagan’ and ‘Paganism’ are not mentioned, the disc is a primer
in Latvian Paganism, as the music listener and the reader of the notes is
immersed in songs, deities, and rituals of the native Paganism of Latvia.
The disc thus can be compared to Kūlgrinda’s Ugnies Apeigos.
In the same year as Music of Solar Rites was fijirst issued on cassette,
Muktupāvels also released a solo recording of traditional kokles songs,
showcasing the various styles of regions of Latvia. This 1993 recording
would eventually be repackaged with a very diffferent set of kokles compositions
as the two-disc set Valdis Muktupāvels: Kokles, released by UPE
records in 2002 as part of its Latvian Folk Music Collection. One disc
contains traditional kokles tunes, and the other features Muktupāvels’
own experimental compositions, incorporating the Indian sarod along
with violin, cello, bass guitar, hornipe, and overtone whistle and voice,
as well as his wife Rūta’s singing. While grounded in Latvian folk sensibility,
these ‘Muktukokles’ compositions possess a mystical, expansive
quality, representing an intriguing post-folkloric direction for the master
kokles player and ethnomusicologist, who is now an associate professor
at the University of Latvia and a member of the National Culture Board.
The Indian flavourings of the ‘Muktukokles’ recording are also, like the
Indian explorations of Atalyja and Veronika Povilionienė in Lithuania, a
nod to the Indo-European afffijinities of Baltic religion and culture. Another
project that combined Latvian and Indian elements, including singing in
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374 michael f. strmiska
both Sanskrit and Latvian to showcase linguistic afffijinities, is Ramadance,
a now-defunct group from the early 2000s, led by singer Aigars Grāvers.
They recorded two albums, Sāga (2000) and Extravagance (2003).
In the early 1980s, Ilga Reizniece teamed up with another kokles-playing
Muktupāvels, Valdis’ brother Māris, who was not an academic but a
skilled musician and folklore enthusiast, to form the post-folk ensemble
Iļģi, which became the most famous and accomplished of all such music
groups in Latvia. Though dedicated in its early years to performing Latvian
traditional music in an ‘authentic’ manner, with band members conducting
their own ethnographic expeditions to gather folk songs from rural
areas, Iļģi would eventually chart a diffferent, more eclectic and adventurous
course.
As much state-sponsored, Soviet-approved Latvian folk music in the
early 1980s was an artifijicially upbeat concoction that was almost comically
out of tune with the actual social and psychological conditions
in late Soviet era Latvia, Iļģi initially gained attention for performing
more solemn, heartfelt, and minor-key forms of folk music. The public
responded warmly; the authorities, less so. As bass player Gatis Gaujenieks
reflected;
[a]t the time, the folklore movement was more of a political statement than
a musical trend. Singing and playing was inevitably linked to Latvian history,
archaeology, ethnography, mythology and traditions, and the nascent independence
movement . . . As a result, folk ensembles became de facto centers
of national and cultural studies. References to ‘pagan’ Gods that appear in
many a folksong, were also causes of concern to Soviet censorship . . . At that
time in Latvia, the music that was ‘allowable’ was very up-tempo and cheery;
sort of the sugar-coated version. The more somber and sincere folk melodies
were the ones that appealed the most to Ilga (Global Village Idiot 2001).
As Gaujenieks notes, there was an inherent Pagan sensibility in much of
the folk music researched and performed by Ilga Reizniece and her bandmates.
This was also reflected in the name of the band, with Iļģi literally
translating as “spirits of the departed,” a concept with both religious and
political resonance. On the one hand it expressed reverence for the past
and for ancestors, who are of great concern in Baltic Pagan tradition, but
on the other hand, the name could refer to the hundreds of thousands of
Latvians who departed this life due to Soviet oppression and brutality.
Due to Soviet censorship, many of Iļģi’s fijirst recordings were only
available outside the country. An anthology of these early works was
issued by UPE records in 2002 as Agrie gadi (‘Early Years’), a two-disc set
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 375
comprised of one disc, also titled Agrie gadi, with music from 1981–1991,
and a second, Rāmi rāmi (‘Quiet, quiet’, or ‘Calm, calm’), repackaging
music fijirst released on cassette in 1993. The music on the fijirst disc is
subdued and solemn, with minimal instrumentation consisting of kokles,
violin, ģīga (a low-toned, two-stringed trough violin), and percussion. The
second disc has more variety in tempo, mood, and instrumentation, hinting
at the experimentation that characterises the band’s music from the
late 1990s to the present. It was with Rāmi rāmi that the members of Iļģi
began to speak of their music as ‘post-folk’ or ‘post-folkloric’.
With Saules Meita (‘Daughter of the Sun’), released in 1998, this new
musical approach had matured, with arrangements that augment traditional
Latvian instruments with acoustic guitar, electric bass, synthesizer,
computer programming, bongos and drums, weaving a rock-and-roll
element into this folk music tapestry, but Ilga Reizniece’s distinctive
voice and violin, Māris Muktupāvels’ kokles and dūdas (Latvian bagpipe),
and the ģīga preserve the essence of Iļģi’s characteristic post-folk sound.
Some credit for this widening of musical horizons must go to Reizneice’s
and Muktupāvels’ collaboration with the popular and influential poprock
band Jauns Mēness (‘New Moon’) in the mid-1990s. Jauns Mēness
was led by singer Ainars Mielavs, who was also the impresario behind
the Latvian record label UPE, which became the primary distributor of
Iļģi’s recordings.
Another member of Jauns Mēness who would come to play an important
role in Iļģi was bass and ģīga player Gatis Gaujenieks, a LatvianAmerican
who had played in a Latvian-American rock band called Akacis
in the United States in the 1980s and then emigrated to Latvia after independence,
eventually becoming a member fijirst of Jauns Mēness, then Iļģi
(Global Village Idiot 2001; Kaljo 2009). Gaujenieks was a profijicient studio
technician as well as a talented bassist, and in both capacities helped to
create the dynamic new Iļģi style on Saules Meita. Singer Māra Kalniņa,
formerly in Latvian pop-dance band, Marana, also joined Iļģi at this time.
The addition of musicians from outside the folk music world signifijied
Iļģi’s transformation into a post-folkloric ensemble.
Saules Meita also displays the post-folkloric direction of Iļģi in the
combination of traditional material with original compositions. Though
most of the songs are folk music dainas, four out of twelve songs are original
compositions. It is a tribute to the artistry of the musicians that the
original and traditional songs blend together smoothly. Taken as a whole,
Saules Meita is a coherent song-cycle organised around the theme of a
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376 michael f. strmiska
young woman on the edge of adulthood, observed through the lens of the
traditional Latvian Pagan worldview, which interweaves human concerns
with mythological reflections. As the liner notes explain,
[w]ho is this ‘traditional girl’ in a national costume with a wreath of flowers
in her hair? She is your great great grandmother, who lived her life as fully
in her day and time, as we do now. Her songs tell us her hopes, desires, fears
and circumstances. Through her we can enter the world of myth—as it was
in the past, and as we create our own myths for today and tomorrow. This
young woman is passionate, she is full of wonder, she makes mistakes and
sometimes acts foolishly. To call her by her given name, she is the Daughter
of the Sun.
This brief statement provides an insight into how Iļģi relates to Latvian
traditional culture and native Baltic Paganism. There is no desire to return
to a fossilised, frozen-in-amber form of music, style of living, or way of
thinking. Traditional culture and religion is seen as a foundation and an
inspiration, as both a ground to stand on and a guide to future horizons,
but not sealed offf from new ideas or information. Ilga Reizniece explained
her ideas about religion, tradition and Paganism in an email communication
to the author.
Iļģi are neither pagans nor neopagans. Had true ancient wisdom, rituals,
shamans, teachers, etc. survived in Latvia, as, hopefully, they did for Indians
and other peoples untouched by civilization, and if I lived out in the country,
in nature, as seems to be necessary for ancient religions, then maybe I
would observe some of the rituals and consider myself a pagan. (Because
I truly believe each people’s own religion and beliefs are the best for them,
and I have strong objections to what the Christian church has done!)
The truth is important to me, and as soon as I realize someone labels as
a ritual something thought up by me or a colleague—that’s not for me. If
someone says my compositions seem to be a thousand years old, then that
is a compliment.
 The only celebration in which I not only take an active role, but also have
shared with others for years, what to do and how to do it, is Jāņi. First of all,
it is due to the existence of an enormous volume of related music as well as
a wealth of information about the traditions. Everyone can pick and choose
what they want to take from this and do or renew, without faking it. If I can
explain to a child why we do what we do, then I can do it. I don’t have the
same answers for many other holidays, which is why I don’t observe them.
And nature plays a role. Nature in Latvia at the summer solstice is the richest
and most beautiful. It is a time when even the most modern people can
feel at one with nature. It could be said that the religion of my ancestors
is expressed in nature and music . . . Because other holidays have far fewer
songs and less opportunity to feel at one with nature (too cold) I celebrate
them less than Jāņi.
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 377
In Iļģi’s early days I did search for the most ancient songs and melodies—
so, of course, there was a desire to fijind that which others, such as Dievturi,
claim to have found.
And, singing and playing, I also feel God [Dievs] as well as Laima. I also
feel the Meža māte [Forest Mother] when in the forest, Jūras māte [Sea
Mother] when at the sea (at beaches where days go by and you see no one,
and there are such beaches in Latvia. Of course, not at seaside resorts.) But
to practice some sort of rituals that have been thought up by a folklore
ensemble member—that really is not acceptable to me. I am not saying
they can’t do it. Everyone does what they think is good and helps them live.
Occasionally I participate, if the rituals are done tastefully and inofffensively
(a good example—the Krūmiņš family).
Perhaps it could be called post-traditional religion, but under no circumstances
should it be called traditional, because no one knows how our
ancestors worshipped the gods—exactly how they did it, what they felt and
what they thought. Maybe it comes to some in a dream . . . or from a [woven]
belt14
or a sign on a tree or a rock, or in the sky . . . Maybe that can happen.
Maybe some hear something like that in our music. That would make
me especially happy. Because it is important to me to believe our ancestors
were truly pure Baltic people, daina Latvians, and God came to them quietly,
peacefully, without disturbing a flower. Not with fijire and a sword, as
with other peoples. What is important to me are my great grandmothers and
grandfathers, the rhythm and order of their lives, my identity, and of course,
I don’t like to present as fact what I only feel.
I can express myself in music. My beliefs and dreams.
For many years I have been very interested in everything about the lives
of my ancestors, their culture, religion. Iļģi’s early repertoire included “God
Songs” and “Sun Songs.” Through music I sought my way, but it did not lead
me to religion. It did lead me to Latvian identity. I will stick with music. As I
said, neopaganism in Latvia to me seems pleasant, but for me—too artifijicial
[samākslots] (Reizniece 2010).
What Reizniece says about elements of pre-Christian, Pagan religious tradition
being important to her sense of Latvian culture and identity and
her experience of nature without feeling the need to adopt a comprehensive
new-old Pagan or Neo-Pagan religion out of the folkloric fragments
of the past, is similar to the views of many other Latvian (and Lithuanian)
musicians consulted for this chapter. They enjoy, embrace and celebrate
Pagan elements of their cultural traditions, but do not see the need to
formalise this as an offfijicial ‘religion’ per se. Thus, though their music and
14
 Traditional Latvian weaving has beautiful designs that incorporate mythological
motifs in another testimonial to the interconnectedness of traditional arts and the Pagan
Baltic worldview. See Latvju rakstu zīmes (“Latvian Symbols”), internet site, http://valoda
.ailab.lv/kultura/kultura/orn01.htm. Accessed 18/12/2010.
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378 michael f. strmiska
indeed their own personal spiritual leanings might be described as Pagan
or at least ‘Paganistic’, they would not describe themselves as Pagans or
Neo-Pagans.
Another Iļģi-related music project from the late 1990s that highlighted
the Pagan dimension of Latvian folk culture was the aptly titled Pagānu
Gadagrāmata (‘Pagan Yearbook’) released in 1999, in which Reizniece,
Muktupāvels and other musicians with classical composer and rock
keyboardist Uģis Prauliņš provided a contemporary, world-music interpretation
of traditional Latvian dainas along with original compositions
by Prauliņš.15
The songs are arranged in sequence according to the seasons,
from spring through summer and fall and back to freezing winter
once more, an aural ‘yearbook’ of traditional Latvian nature as it changes
through the year. Prauliņš states in the liner notes,
[i]t’s about the constant alternation of seasons outside the city, at places we
hardly ever visit these days—by the river that’s running night and day, by
the sea that lives a life of its own, in wild blooming meadows with its birds
and forests where the beasts hide . . . I wouldn’t like these songs to climb
the Latvian pop charts and go down as swiftly afterwards. These songs are
meant to be a retrospection of a whole year for the inner self of an urban
man—at places we hardly every visit these days.
Though Prauliņš does not explain why he calls his songs a ‘Pagan’ yearbook,
the implied explanation is that the active awareness and warm love
of nature expressed in these songs are grounded in the Latvian Pagan veneration
of the natural world.
The arrangements on this recording take several further post-folk steps
beyond where Iļģi leaves offf with Saules Meita. Traditional Latvian instruments,
particularly the kokles, are still very much in evidence, but there
is heavier use of electronic keyboards, both electric and acoustic guitar
courtesy of Jauns Mēness member Gints Sola, and a liberal use of African
percussion instruments like kalimba, balafon and djembe, contributed by
percussionist Nils Īle. The adventurous spirit of Saules Meita and Pagānu
Gadagrāmata was well received in Latvia, with Saules Meita receiving
the ‘Greatest Music’ and ‘Record of the Year’ awards in 1998, and Pagānu
Gadagrāmata recognised as ‘Best Folk Music Album of the Year’ in 1999.
15
 There is a profijile of the multi-talented Uģis Prauliņš at the Living Composers
Project internet site, at http://www.composers21.com/compdocs/praulinsu.htm. Accessed
29/11/2010.
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 379
Iļģi kicked offf the new millennium with 2000’s Sēju Vēju (‘Sow the
Wind’), which was a male-themed counterpart to Saules Meita, with songs
concerning young men attaining manhood and marriage. All songs are
traditional dainas with no original compositions, but the arrangements
are less traditional than Saules Meita, with pounding drums and driving
acoustic guitar adding rock-and-roll exuberance. This was somewhat disorienting
to some folk music purists and long-standing Iļģi fans, such as
the Latvian-American reviewer Amanda Jātniece, who titled her ambivalent
review, “Post-folk wind blows a bit hard,” but it helped Iļģi reach
a younger audience (Jātniece 2000). As with the earlier album, Latvian
Pagan mythology is a continual theme, beginning with the fijirst song,
‘Kas varē ja grožus vīt’ (‘Who Weaves the Reins?’), praising the miraculous
works of the sons of god (Dieva dēli) and the daughters of the sun (Saules
meita).
In the decade since Sēju Vēju, Iļģi has continued to experiment on its
ongoing artistic odyssey, never abandoning traditional Latvian instruments,
but supplementing them with everything from electric guitar to
symphony orchestra to tanpura to banjo to tablas, as noted in a retrospective
essay by Egil Kaljo (2006). Traditional dainas remain the main
source of the band’s material, though original songs occasionally appear.
Pagan mythology and Paganistic sensibility characterise the band’s overall
body of work. The more traditionally-oriented albums include 2003’s
Kaza Kāpa Debesīs (‘The Goat Climbed up into the Sky’), a collection
including a seven-song sequence commissioned for the Latvian Dance
Festival, with three original compositions and one inspired by Lithuanian
folklore, Totari (2005), a set of winter solstice Kalado songs, 2006’s Ne Uz
Vienu Dienu (‘Not Only For One Day’), a collection of wedding dainas,
voted second best European world music recording for 2006 by World
Music Charts Europe (WMCE), and Īsākās Nakts Dziesmas (‘Songs of the
Shortest Night’), a 2009 compilation of summer solstice Jāņi songs. The
two most ambitious recordings that the band has produced are 2002’s
Krusta Dancis (‘Cross Dance’), a second collaboration with Uģis Prauliņš
that blends traditional and electronic instrumentation with the soaring
voices of the Latvian Radio Choir, and in the same year, Spēlēju, Dancoju
(‘I Sang, I Danced’), an operatic adaptation of a mythological play
by an eminent Latvian author, Jānis Rainis (1865–1929) that teams the
members of Iļģi with Uģis Prauliņš and guest vocalists, most notably Rūta
Muktupāvela. Spēlēju, Dancoju, conceived as a spectacular, multi-media
extravaganza, was performed in Riga with the Lithuanian experimental
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380 michael f. strmiska
puppet theatre Miraklis as part of an international theatre festival in 2001
(Muktupāvels 2002).
In addition to such musical explorations, Ilga Reizniece and the band
remain devoted to fostering awareness and appreciation of Latvian folk
culture, both in Latvia and abroad. Reizniece, a former music teacher
at the Jurmāla Alternative School, lectures on folk music and folk lore,
including regularly participating in the annual ‘3 × 3’ (three generations)
summer folklore camps in Latvia, which parallel the Lithuanian camps
run by Kūlgrinda. In 2006, the Latvian Ministry of Culture honoured Ilga
Reizniece with its Grand Award in Folklore.16
If Iļģi can be defijined as post-folk or post-folkloric, having moved from
‘pure’ folk music to a more experimental and contemporary approach that
still takes inspiration from traditional Latvian folk music, then the religious
perspective of the band and its music can be defijined as post-Pagan
in that the traditional world-view and religious sensibility that informs
much of Iļģi’s music is drawn from Baltic Paganism, without Reizniece or
her colleagues being committed to or directly involved in any attempt to
revive Paganism as a religion.
While Skandinieki, Valdis Muktupāvels, and Iļģi all perform Latvian
music with strong Pagan elements without directly associating themselves
with Paganism, the folk music ensembles Vilki (‘Wolves’) and
Vilcenes (‘She-Wolves’) have been forceful and unequivocal in asserting
their Pagan religious identity. The members of these two related groups
are not professional, academically trained musicians, but folklore enthusiasts
who have attained a high degree of professionalism over years of
activity. Vilki was fijirst formed in 1992 by Edgars Lipors, a man of diverse
occupations from acting to teaching, as a men’s choral ensemble for the
performance of traditional Latvian warrior songs, which some members
had already been doing in the 1980s. Vilki means ‘wolves’, and was chosen
to mark the valour of Latvian warriors in resisting invasion and occupation,
from the German crusaders of the twelfth century through the Nazis
and the Soviets in the twentieth. It is no coincidence that Jānis Krūmiņš,
one of the founders of Vilki and currently a member of the Riga City
Council, has worked for years as an administrator of Latvijas Okupācijas
Muzejs (the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, also known as the Occupation
Museum), a house of horror in which the mass executions and
16
 Noted on the band’s Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ilgi/26437814
6686#!/pages/Ilgi/264378146686?v=info. Accessed 13/12/2010.
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 381
deportations of Latvians under Nazi and Communist rule are described in
heartrending detail.17
Jānis’ wife Inese Krūmiņa lost both her mother and
grandmother to the Soviet gulags, as she explained in a 2002 interview.
Vilki is a nine-person, male-only group, the gender focus accentuating
the warrior orientation of the ensemble. Some songs performed by
Vilki are believed to date to the medieval period, with more recent songs
referring to World Wars I and II. In events organised for educational and
folkloric purposes, Vilki combines performances of folk songs, played on
traditional instruments, with demonstrations of traditional Latvian horsemanship,
weapons, and fijighting techniques. Another purpose in founding
Vilki was to stimulate the interest of young Latvian men in folklore, folksongs,
and the traditional Baltic Pagan worldview. During the Soviet era,
folklore study and performance in Latvia had mainly been the domain of
women, and Vilki’s founders wanted to restore male interest, participation
and pride in the traditions of the past.
Vilki’s activities have expanded from performances of warrior-related
folklore to recreating pre-industrial folk crafts and Latvian Pagan religion.
Group members learned to make weapons, personal adornments such as
rings and pendants, musical instruments, and other items by pre-industrial
craft methods. The original male orientation of Vilki was eventually
supplemented by a female group, Vilcenes, formed in 1996, which sings
traditional women’s songs similar to those performed by Iļģi on Saules
Meita and Ne Uz Vienu Dienu. The ‘she-wolves’, most of whom are the
wives of the Vilki ‘wolves’, practice traditional women’s crafts such as sewing
and weaving, faithfully recreating garments, as well as the complex
designs used for belts, sashes and other items.18
Jānis Krumiņš and Inese
Krūmiņa have also played a leading role in organizing the ‘3 × 3’ Latvian
summer folklore camps that Ilga Reizniece contributes to as well.
The emphasis on historical reconstruction by Vilki and Vilcenes has
influenced other ensembles, such as Trejasmens and Vilkači (‘Werewolves’),
which also pay tribute to past warrior traditions and pre-industrial
lifestyles. Another important fijigure in the traditional crafts in Latvia
is Daumants Kalniņš, a smith, artist and scholar of Baltic metallurgy
and jewellery traditions based in Cēsis. Kalniņš held an international
17
 Internet site, http://www.omf.lv/index.php?lang=english. Accessed 02/01/2010. See
also Kelleher (2008).
18
 A fijine illustrated study of traditional Latvian folk clothing in historical perspective is
available at internet site, http://www.li.lv/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id
=42&Itemid=1129. Accessed 03/01/2011.
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382 michael f. strmiska
seminar on the relationship of Latvian metalworking traditions to folklore
and mythology entitled ‘Mīts un Metāls’ (‘Myths and Metals’) at the Cēsis
History Museum in 1997, with a number of lectures and exhibits from the
seminar subsequently published in an illustrated volume (Kalniņš 1997).
Musically, Vilki and Vilcenes are fijirst and foremost choral ensembles,
with deep, booming male voices on the part of Vilki and higher, soaring
female voices in Vilcenes. The accompaniment is limited to traditional
Latvian instruments such as kokles, dūdas, ģīga, drums, horns, whistles,
pipes, and percussion. Though the instrumentation is minimal compared
to the post-folk complexity and instrumental variety of Iļģi, the arrangements
are efffective and even dramatic. The vocals are also strong and
compelling. To date, Vilki has produced two albums, 2000’s Dzelzīm dzimu
(‘Born to the Iron’) and 2007’s Mans bērīt’s kumeliņš (‘My Dearest Bay
Horse’), and Vilcenes the disc Karavīra līgaviņa (‘Bride of the Warrior’),
released in 2006.
The religious aspect of Vilki and Vilcenes stems from members’ past
involvement, and eventual disillusionment, with the major Latvian Pagan
movement Dievturi. Inese Krūmiņa (2002) states that they have no disagreement
with the belief structure of Dievturi, which draws on the dainas
and Pagan Baltic gods of Latvian tradition. Their discontent arises from
the perception that the ritual aspect of Dievturi, devised during the interwar
period by Dievturi founder Ernests Brastiņš, is imitative of Protestant
Christianity. The typical Dievturi gathering begins with a spoken ‘praisegiving’
or convocation, followed by the singing of dainas and a lecture
on moral and spiritual issues not unlike a Protestant minister’s sermon.
While recognising that the existing records of Pagan Latvian religion, as
of most European Pagan traditions, are too fragmentary to provide the
basis for a full range of ritual practices, Krūmiņa and other members of
Vilki-Vilcenes felt it was wrong to use Christianity to fijill in gaps in Baltic
ritual tradition and more appropriate to draw on related forms of IndoEuropean
religion, with respect to the original Indo-European basis of
Baltic Paganism. This has tended to mean borrowing from Hinduism, as
the only original Indo-European religious tradition to have never been
suppressed or exterminated, but to have continued to thrive and develop.
During a visit by the author to Latvia in 2002, Inese Krūmiņa displayed
photographs of a wedding ritual she had created, which draws on Hindu
ceremonies, with the couple making several circuits around a sacred fijire
as in Hindu nuptials. Like Kūlgrinda in Lithuania, Vilki-Vilcenes maintains
the importance of a sacred fijire as a continuation of Indo-European ritual
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 383
tradition with both Baltic and Hindu analogues. It might seem contradictory
to Vilki-Vilcene’s intense devotion to Baltic, and specifijically Latvian,
traditional culture to draw on Indian religion in this way, but the IndoBaltic
connection has been a matter of concern to Latvian and Lithuanian
scholars for two centuries now, and is thus a ‘tradition’ in its own right,
albeit more academic than folkloric (Strmiska 2011).
Pagan religious elements manifest in Vilki and Vilcenes songs by references
to native Latvian deities and a Paganistic glorifijication of nature.
Mans bērīt’s kumeliņš (‘My Dearest Bay Horse’) is devoted to horse-lore,
including tributes to equine deities, mining a very rich stream in Latvian
folk tradition that is still influential today, even at the level of government,
as the following illustrates. In June 2008, one year after this Vilki
album was released, the Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis endorsed
the proposal of Defense Minister Vinets Veldre, an avid horseman, to purchase
twenty-fijive horses to create an elite equestrian honour guard for
use in greeting visiting foreign dignitaries (New Europe 2008). Veldre was
reported as stating that his goal was to “restore military traditions” of the
past. It is not known if the Defense Minister is a fan of Vilki, but they
certainly seem to have some common interests.
One very unusual and interesting type of Latvian Pagan lore offfered by
Vilki in several songs on Dzelzīm dzimu are magical charms and incantations
used to preserve warriors from harm in battle. The song Māte mane
lolodama (‘Cherished by Mother’) is a genuinely eerie rendition of a spell
that a mother would chant to protect her son. The title track, Dzelzīm
dzimu explains procedures for rendering the warrior invincible through
magical use of stone and iron. Between its mystical, martial and ethnohistorical
elements, Vilki-Vilcenes has carved out a distinctive niche in the
folk music world in Latvia, and also extended awareness of other possibilities
for Latvian Paganism beyond Dievturi.
As in Lithuania, there is a lively heavy metal subculture in Latvia,
including Baltic Pagan metal bands that draw on Pagan mythology, folklore,
and folk songs. The most prominent group is Skyforger, a band whose
name direct references the thunder-god Pērkons (Lithuanian Perkūnas).
Formed in 1995 by members of an earlier Latvian metal band, Grindmaster
Dead, the band colourfully describes its musical approach on its internet
home page.
Skyforger have been tempering their music in the smithy of the Thundergod
since 1995. For the last decade, the band has been fijighting under the
flag of Latvian Pagan Metal; an extreme blend of traditional Baltic Folk
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384 michael f. strmiska
music and various Metal influences ranging from Norwegian inspired Black
Metal through to 80s-rooted Heavy Metal. The band’s unique combination
of ancient and modern influence has given them a wide appeal throughout
both the Metal and Folk scenes, and has brought great variety to their song
writing over the course of the six Skyforger albums.19
Thematically, Skyforger covers similar ground to Vilki, celebrating the
valour, glory and tragedy of warriors’ lives from medieval times to the
present, honouring Latvian Pagan gods, and expressing a sense of kinship
with nature. The mood is typical of Baltic Pagan metal, dark and foreboding.
‘Werewolves’, from the band’s fijirst album, Semigalls War Chant (1997,
re-released 2005), sets the tone.
The pale moon casts its evil eye/ Over the man in the forest
He calls wolves with the soundless bagpipe
Utters the magic words of summoning
And when the snowstorm starts its icy dance
Wolves come—red burns their eyes
Hungerful howlings fijill the night sky
In the depth of the forest/There live people far from the others
They live by the elders’ custom and worship pagan gods
Wolves guard them against the persecution of Christians
As they deny the dogma of Christ
People from the neighbouring villages
Call this place—the forest of werewolves
(They tell: )Those who pass by the marsh of wolves
Never return (English translation from CD liner notes).
Skyforger recordings evoke the same kind of mystical atmosphere and
quasi-medieval world as on this song, reflecting with solemnity on the
thirteenth century conquest of Latvia by German Christians and celebrating
the defijiance of the Pagan Balts in maintaining their culture and traditions
against foreign invasion. The band’s 1998 album, Kauja Pie Saules
(‘The Battle of Saule’), re-released in 2006, commemorates one of the
greatest victories of Baltic Pagan resistance, the 1236 CE battle in which
a coalition of Baltic tribes annihilated the forces of the German Sword
Brothers. With Semigalls’ Warchant and Kauja Pie Saules, Skyforger established
themselves as Latvia’s premier Baltic Pagan metalsmiths, with a
19
 Internet site, http://www.skyforger.lv/en/index.php?main_page_id=10&page_type=text.
Accessed 04/01/2011. Information about the band can also be found on other internet social
network sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 385
hard-crunching rock guitar sound and guttural, impassioned vocals delivering
their tales of past Baltic Pagan glory with full metal gusto. 2000’s
Latviešu Strelnieki (‘Latvian Riflemen’), takes on a more contemporary
topic, the bravery of Latvian soldiers in World War I.The fourth Skyforger
recording, 2003’s Pērkoņkalve (‘Thunderforge’), returns to the themes of
the earlier albums.
On the band’s fijifth and most atypical recording, Zobena Dziesma
(‘Sword Song’) from 2003, Skyforger took a break from Pagan metal. Band
members traded in their electric guitars for the Latvian folk instruments
of kokles, ģīga, and dūdas as well as acoustic guitar and drums. This was
not a total stylistic departure, however, as they had often mixed in traditional
folk instruments with their contemporary electric ones. The difference
with Zobena Dziesma was that the traditional instruments were
the main focus rather than an embellishment. The songs are traditional
dainas supplemented by acoustic versions of several past Skyforger compositions.
In the liner notes, Skyforger emphasises that its members do
not consider themselves to be professional folk musicians, but this recording
demonstrates their solidarity with Latvian folk music tradition and
their understanding of their own music as a modern, heavy metal expression
of that older tradition. Despite the all-acoustic instrumentation, the
music still has a forceful, hard-driving feel, proving that it is easier to take
the electricity out of the instruments than to take the metal out of the
musicians. In Skyforger’s most recent album, Kurbads (2010), the band
returned to its Pagan metal roots, with occasional folk elements such
as dūdas and ģīga. This is an ambitious ‘concept album’ concerning the
adventures of Kurbads, a hero from Latvian mythology who is born from
a white mare, another indication of the ubiquity of equine themes in
Latvian folk tradition.
Skyforger’s attitude toward religion is complex. There are frequent tributes
to Latvian Pagan gods in their music, and the band’s internet home
page features a section called “A Brief Look at Latvian Mythology,” a concise
but informative glossary of Latvian deities and myths. This concludes
with the following caution:
In the early twenty-fijirst century, people may have an idea of Latvian mythology
that is somewhat closer to what it must have been centuries ago, yet perfection
in this area is far away and perhaps unreachable. All we can do is try
to reconstruct an image of Latvian mythology from whatever remains of it
there are left after both Christian religiousness and Soviet anti-religiousness
have done their best to destroy all memory of it.(Skyforger n.d.)
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386 michael f. strmiska
The home page also contains a FAQ (frequently asked questions) section,
which includes the statement, “Skyforger is a completely non-political
band, and none of the band members are interested in any of the world’s
religions. They consider all of them equally false.” In email communications
with the author, Peter, Skyforger’s lead singer and guitarist, offfered
some further clarifijication of the band’s perspective on religion and particularly,
Baltic Paganism.
We consider all so-called offfijicial religions, especially Christianity and Islam
as a tool for brainwashing, to keep people in obedience to ruling power
and spiritual ignorance . . . Our Baltic pagan believing was very diffferent
from those. Our ancient gods and deities were seen not as grim rulers in
the sky—but more or less as spirits who can help or harm people in their
daily life. They lived around and people tried to live in harmony with them.
Rituals and offferings were made to make those gods and spirits more welldisposed
to people, but there was nothing like blind obedience which was
asked—or idea to spread and force one and only religion towards all people
around . . . 
Today personally we see this old Baltic pagan religion more as a philosophy
of life, a way of how to look on things in world, as a wisdom of our
ancestors who had lived in harmony with Mother Nature and were part of
it . . . Sometimes I see much similarity in our religion with Northern America
Indians, there is so many things we share, especially how people treated
Nature and world where they lived.
Unfortunately not much is left from where we can take our knowledge:
mainly they are dainas—our old traditional songs and some old writings/
church books made by German priests or scholars who lived here. We can
fijind some things in folk tales, old customs and magic incantations, which
was luckily written down in 19th century by local folk enthusiasts such as
Krisjanis Barons . . . 
As for neo pagan movements, here are some of my thoughts. Dievturi was
made by one man (Ernests Brastiņš) in times of so called “romantic nationalism”
we had here, between two World wars 1920–1940. This religion, even
if it tried to be pagan-like, took a lot of things from Christianity; sometimes
it really feels like it is Christian religion just made to pretend to be Latvian
pagan religion! At those times there were a lot of speculations going around
about such things. Well known poets and writers tried to make their own
pantheons for Latvian mythology, everyone believed he and only he is right
and had found how it all was by reading some shady historical books. Many
times they were writing down their own fantasies, just to make it through.
So same was with Dievturi movement, while they used many traditional
things, the rest is just self made and what’s worse—they took and implanted
things from Christian religion with a purpose to adapt Christian people into
this new “only true Latvian” religion.
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 387
Another bad thing here is that for years we write our history by ignoring
other nations who lived around us. Our Baltic paganism wasn’t separated
inside iron walls—people were constantly in contacts with other nations
around: Slavs, Vikings and Germans. I bet they made great impact on people
who lived here. We can discover a lot by studying their mythology, traditions
and folklore (Peter 2010).
Peter’s thoughtful and nuanced scepticism does not by any means reject
the value of Latvian Baltic Paganism, but acknowledges the difffijiculty of
fully recreating it due to the limitations of the historical and ethnographic
records. It seems that he understands Baltic Paganism primarily as a
nature-cantered worldview powerfully expressed in the folklore, songs
and myths from the past, deserving of both continued contemplation and
continued celebration. Peter explains Skyforger’s religious perspective
as ‘Paganistic’ or ‘Post-Pagan’ in the way of Ilga Reizniece and Iļģi rather
than straightforwardly ‘Pagan’ in the way of Kūlgrinda and Vilki-Vilcenes.
Peter’s criticisms of Dievturi echo those of Vilki, but his fijinal point is
something of a new departure. Due to the nationalistic orientation that
tends to dominate the discourse of both modern Baltic Paganism and
related musical forms like Baltic Pagan metal music, it is rare to fijind any
positive appreciation of Baltic culture and religion having possibly benefijited
from interaction with neighbouring peoples and their traditions.
This openness and receptiveness to other peoples, cultures, and traditions
may mark Skyforger as not only post-Pagan, but also, in a qualifijied sense,
post-nationalistic. Skyforger’s songs nearly burst with pride and love for
the Latvian nation and its history, but its members are able to see beyond
a narrow, parochial and defensive nationalism in constructing their sense
of Latvian identity and pride. This is in line with the ‘liberal nationalism’
of the political philosophers Yael Tamir (1994) and Will Kymlicka
(1995), also endorsed by the Lithuanian political philosopher Leonidas
Donskis (2002).
Another band that has succeeded in melding heavy-metal attitude
with traditional Latvian instruments is Auļi, an ensemble formed in 2003.
Auļi’s sound is centred around thundering Latvian dūdas bagpipes and
pounding drums, supplemented by ģīga and occasional string bass. Auļi
does not use electric instruments, but does not seem to need them. Their
third album, 2010’s Etnotranss (‘Ethnotrance’), is a powerful and engaging
work suggesting a very bright future for these post-folkloric dudes with
pre-industrial dūdas. The album also features an intriguing mytho-poetic
essay imaging a shamanistic journey to the underworld by the writer
Laima Muktupāvela, another talented member of the Muktupāvels clan.
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388 michael f. strmiska
Auļi made a joint appearance with Skyforger at the Latvian Music Records
Annual Awards on 23 February 2010.
It would be remiss to conclude this discussion of Pagan-related Latvian
music without mentioning that Vaire Viķe-Freiberga, President of Latvia
from 1999–2007, recorded Vairas Dziesmas (‘Vaira’s Songs’), a disc of
traditional Latvian dainas in 2008, under the musical direction of Valdis
Muktupāvels with instrumental and vocal support by Valdis and Māris
Muktupāvels and several members of Iļģi. The woman who has served
as the voice of her country on the world stage now proves to also have a
fijine voice as a folk singer, singing traditional songs from her childhood.
The material includes songs with direct mythological references. Laima
sēdi liepiņā (‘Laima in the linden’) and Upītē olu metu (‘I threw a stone
into a river’), address Laima, the Latvian goddess of fate, and Saulīt, mana
krustamāte (Saule, my godmother), portrays the sun-goddess Saule as fol-
lows:
The Sun, my godmother
Reached out her hand across the Daugava [river].
The fijingers of both her hands
Were covered with gold spirals.
“Oh Sun, you are so bright.
Give me some of your brightness.
Oh Laima, you are so good,
Give me some of your goodness.”
The sun sets in the evening,
Adorning the tree-tops.
On the linden she sets a crown of gold,
On the oak—a crown of silver
(English translation of daina
by Viķe-Freiberga, from liner notes).
This is clearly not intended as a ‘Pagan’ recording, but as a tribute to the
Latvian folk culture that Viķe-Freiberga has been involved with all her life
and championed as both a scholar and a political leader. As with Iļģi and
Skyforger, this is a recording that celebrates Baltic Paganism as a cherished
component of Latvian folk culture, but stops short of endorsing or
promoting any modern version of Latvian Paganism. Yet it is worth noting
that there are no Christian hymns or Christian references in this collection
of favourite Latvian songs, while there are, as noted, explicit and
signifijicant Pagan references.
The former Latvian President was asked by the author for her thoughts
on Latvian Pagan movements such as Dievturi. She responded via email,
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 389
“[m]y own impression is that ‘neo-paganism’ of any kind has been on the
wane for the last ten years at least, while Christian fundamentalists from
abroad continue to be aggressively active” (Viķe-Freiberga 2010). While
she refrains from explicitly embracing Latvian Paganism, Viķe-Freiberga’s
concern regarding Christian evangelical onslaught is fully in line with the
point of view of modern Baltic Pagan movements, from Romuva to Dievturi
to Vilki, which all agree on the need to protect native Baltic culture,
including the remains—and refrains—of pre-Christian Lithuanian and
Latvian Paganism against the threat of Christian domination in the twentyfijirst
century, just as their Baltic ancestors fought offf crusading Christian
knights in the thirteenth-century Battle of Saulė and the fijifteenth-century
Battle of Grünwald.
The Post-Folkloric, the Post-Pagan, and the Paganesque
There is a rich and varied body of contemporary music in both Lithuania
and Latvia inspired by Baltic Paganism, which is itself grounded in the traditional
folk music of the two countries. Shared understandings of Baltic
history, ethnic identity, and nationalism also add strength and signifijicance
to the Pagan elements in the music and culture of Latvia and Lithuania.
References to pre-Christian gods, like the Lithuanian Perkūnas or the Latvian
Pērkons, conjure up ways in which the worship of such native gods
was suppressed and Christianisation imposed via conquest, crusade, and
colonisation. This helps explain the persistent intertwining of Pagan and
military-historical themes by Baltic artists from Donis to Žalvarinis to
Veronika Povilionienė to Vilki to Skyforger, who have together created a
sizable set of recordings that pay homage both to Baltic Pagan traditions
of the past, and the triumphs and tragedies of Baltic resistance to foreign
invasion and domination.
It is notable that, of the musicians and music groups examined in this
chapter, it is those most directly involved in creating a modern version
of Baltic Paganism, namely Kūlgrinda and Vilki-Vilcenes, who are also
those whose music is the most ‘traditional,’ in the sense of restricting the
choice of material, the types of instruments, and the style of performance
to those found in traditional Lithuanian and Latvian music as documented
in folkloric and historical research. Their focus on recreating a
‘purist’ style of traditional music is in accord with their intention to also
recreate traditional Baltic religion, that is, Baltic Paganism, as accurately
as possible. In contrast, other musicians and groups such as Atalyja and
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390 michael f. strmiska
Iļģi are much less tradition-bound, with a greater focus on artistic creativity
than folkloric or religious purity, drawing inspiration from Baltic
folk music and Paganism without making it their mission to reproduce
such musical and/or religious traditions in an exact form. This contrast
should not be overstated, however. The highly traditional Kūlgrinda has
been open to collaborations with non-traditional musicians, and while
Ilga Reizniece’s band Iļģi has expanded its musical horizons far beyond
folkloric recreations, the music remains grounded in Latvian folk music
and Ilga remains a passionate advocate of traditional Latvian culture.
The overall situation should therefore not be understood as a dualistic
division between mutually antagonistic traditionalists and anti-traditionalists,
Pagans and non-Pagans, but as a continuum between the more traditional,
the more strictly folkloric, and the more self-consciously Pagan
on the one end of the spectrum extending toward the progressively less
traditional, less overtly Pagan, and more musically experimental at the
other end. All who occupy various positions along this continuum are
united by a strong afffection for Baltic folk music, but they respond differently
to the Pagan elements in Baltic folklore, just as they construct
diffferent musical edifijices over the original folk song foundations. For a
Jonas Trinkūnas or an Inese Krūmiņa, Pagan folklore is a call to arms
to revive and restore native Baltic religious traditions, but for a Donatas
Bielkauskas or a Valdis Muktupāvels, it is an enchanting echo of the Baltic
past, still reverberating in the present, that inspires national pride and
further artistic creativity without constituting the basis of a new, old or
revived ‘religion.’
The distinction between (highly traditional) folk and (partially traditional
but partially experimental and eclectic) post-folk music, which could
alternately be phrased as a contrast between folkloric and post-folkloric
musical approaches, could also be applied to a typological analysis of attitudes
toward Paganism. Distinguishing Pagan from post-Pagan perspectives,
the former would consist of unequivocal devotion to pre-Christian
religion and spirituality, and the latter would designate a positive regard
for pre-Christian elements of traditional songs and other folklore that does
not give rise to such religious activities as prayer or worship, a perspective
perhaps better described as ‘Paganesque’ than Pagan. That is to say,
where a true, dyed-in-the-wool Baltic Pagan will worship Baltic gods and
perform recreations of Baltic rituals, the post-Pagan or Paganesque Lithuanian
or Latvian will enjoy references to Baltic gods and Pagan traditions
as they appear in daily life or popular culture and fijind them attractive,
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paganism-inspired folk music/folk music-inspired paganism 391
meaningful, and inspiring in various ways, without thinking of the gods
as being literally ‘real’ or ‘true’ or feeling the necessity to seriously engage
in any worship or ritual activity. This distinction could also be described
as one between ‘committed’ and ‘casual’ Pagans.
One might ask whether the major world religions of the contemporary,
post-modern world do not also involve a division between committed
‘believers’ and casual ‘post-believers,’ those who deeply believe in the
truth, or at least meaningfulness, of a religion’s doctrines, myths and dogmas,
and those who sometimes, sort of, but never unequivocally, believe,
but that is obviously beyond the scope of this chapter.
The Moon of the Black Horn: Paganism-Inspired Subculture
All of the diffferent meanings and functions of the Pagan heritage inherent
in the permutations of Baltic folk music, and all the possible attitudes,
responses and perspectives to this heritage found among the people of
the region, from the devoutly Pagan to the more distanced post-Pagan, to
the merely Paganesque, come together in joyous profusion each August
at an alternative music and culture festival held annually in Lithuania,
Mėnuo Juodaragis (‘The Moon of the Black Horn’). The brainchild of music
impresario Ugnius Liogė, the founder of the Lithuanian music company
Dangus, the festival was in its thirteenth year in 2010 and shows no signs
of slowing down. A three-day, outdoor afffair that takes place in locations
of historical signifijicance, from Kernavė, the ancient capital of Lithuania,
to Trakai, a medieval castle town, Mėnuo Juodaragis offfers performances
on several simultaneous stages by a wide range of Lithuanian and Latvian
musicians from Kūlgrinda to Atalyja to Poccolos to Skyforger to Auļi to
Donis, with kindred groups from other regions of Europe also occasionally
appearing. This coming together of folk, post-folk, Pagan metal, industrial,
ambient, and other forms of music illustrates the interweaving of folklore,
Paganism, and shared historical consciousness across what might at fijirst
glance seem irreconcilable genre lines.
The festival offfers much more than music, however, and an even broader
sub-cultural milieu becomes evident.20
Festival goers may participate in
guided tours of nearby historic locations, lectures by folklorists and historians,
many of which focus on issues of Pagan religion and mythology,
20
 For further analysis of Lithuanian subcultures, see Ramanauskaitė (2004) and (2009).
349-398_CUSACK-NORMAN_F15.indd 391349-398_CUSACK-NORMAN_F15.indd 391 12/16/2011 12:53:10 PM12/16/2011 12:53:10 PM
392 michael f. strmiska
craft demonstrations on traditional arts from metal smithy to leather
tanning to cloth weaving to jewellery design to textile dyeing, as well as
storytelling sessions and animated cartoons for children, staged medievalstyle
battles by historical re-enactment societies, fijilm screenings, art exhibitions,
musical jam sessions, and modern dance performances. Liogė’s
genius is in combining the traditional with the experimental, the folkloric
with the electronic, around a sometimes explicit, sometimes hinted,
but always underlying theme of celebrating ancient Baltic culture and
the Pagan worldview. The value of the festival in preserving, promoting,
and updating Lithuanian and European folk cultural heritage has been
acknowledged with fijinancial support from the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture
and UNESCO (Eastern Folk n.d.).
From ancient Latvian dainas and Lithaunian dainos to the National
Awakening movements of the nineteenth century to the Singing Revolution
of the twentieth to the multi-media exuberance of Mėnuo Juodaragais
in the twenty-fijirst, Baltic folk music and its spiritual connection to
Baltic Paganism remain important sources of inspiration in the cultural
life of Latvia and Lithuania, and will remain so, even as new forms of
music, religion and culture develop.
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398 michael f. strmiska
Wejdas. 1997. Wejdas. Redstream CD RSR-0122. California: Redstream.
——. 2004. Žemės Alsavimas (“Breathing Earth”). Dangus DGCD 015. Vilnius: Dangus
Records.
Žalvarinis. 2005. Žalio Vario (“Raw Copper”). Prior Records CD 019. Vilnius: Prior Musica.
——. 2008. Folk N’ Rock. Monako M-024–2. Vilnius: Monako Records.
Zpoan Vtenz. 1998. Gimę Nugalėt (“Born to Conquer”). Eldethorne ELD CD 005. UK:
Eldethorne Records. Out of print.
Interviews
(by author unless otherwise noted)
Oļģerts Tālivaldis Auns and Jānis Siliņš. Riga: March 2002. Interpreting by Agita Misāne.
Inese Krūmiņa. Riga: March 2002 and November 2004.
Jānis Krumiņš and Inese Krūmiņa. Riga: March 2002.
Jonas Trinkūnas. Vilnius: March 1996, June 1998, March 2002, and December 2004.
Jonas Trinkūnas and Inija Trinkūnienė. Vilnius: March 2009.
Email correspondence
(with author unless otherwise noted)
Atalyja (individual names not given). November 2010.
Inese Krūmiņa. March 2002, April 2002, and January 2011, and numerous other exchanges
in between.
Ineta Meduneckytė-Tamosiūnienė (Žalvirinis member). December 2010.
Valdis Muktupāvels. January 2011.
Peter (Skyforger member). December 2010.
Ilga Reizniece. December 2010. Translated by Benita Jaundalderis.
Vaira Viķe-Freiberga. December 2010.
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