Latvian culture

This morning, we had a lecture at the National Library on Latvia’s cultural heritage and musical traditions. The professor is an ethnomusicologist at the University of Latvia. Latvia is known as the Land that Sings. Since 1873, they have held a national music festival every 5 or so years, which is focused on folk songs that are a cross between Gregorian chant and medieval music. The song subjects are pantheistic— all nature is holy; Fire keeps out evil spirits. Their favorite national holiday is the summer solstice. Instruments are bagpipes and a type of zither called a Oakley’s.

The architect of the National Library was Gunar Birkert, a Latvian who emigrated to the US after WWII. He was striving for a mountain of glass and a castle of light. It opened in 2014 and is stunning. Birkirt’s well known projects in the US include the Corning Museum of Glass, law schools at University of Ohio and University of Michigan, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City.

We also toured the former Jewish ghetto, saw a monument to the 132 Latvian Jews who survived, primarily by being smuggled out of the ghetto, and the Latvian Holocaust Museum, a very sobering place, as you might expect. About 70,000 Latvian Jews and 20,000 Jews from other countries were killed here. Very few Jews are in Latvia today.Read more