THE LITHUANIAN SINGING REVOLUTION AS CULTURAL HERITAGE AND SOURCE OF SOFT POWER
International Semiotics Institute & Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania
dario.martinelli@ktu.lt; dariomartinelli.eu
Abstract
The present paper aims to look at the phenomenon known as Singing Revolution, in Lithuania, mostly within the frameworks of semiotics, cultural and political studies. After a short socio-historical introduction to the topic, the paper will focus on the way Lithuania has contextualized and handled the Singing Revolution at cultural and institutional level, particularly in the perspective of what, after Joseph Nye (1990 and, more specifically, 2004), has been called Soft Power. Indeed, despite the absolute centrality of the Singing Revolution in the Lithuanian struggle for independence (a centrality that becomes even more relevant when we think that, unlike the other Baltic States, several Lithuanian intellectuals and opinion-leaders were in fact musicians or musicologists), the Lithuanian academic and political institutions have devoted only a minor effort to analyse these phenomena and repertoires. Moreover, very timid were the attempts to academically promote them at international level, often resulting in international ignorance and misunderstandings (e.g., the Canadian documentary “Cultures in conflict” presents the Singing Revolution as an Estonian-only phenomenon, disowning Lithuania –and Latvia – of their historical roles).
What is the role of the Singing Revolution in the current Lithuanian intellectual and institutional discourses? Could the phenomenon become an important tool for cultural and diplomatic promotion of Lithuania abroad? Is Lithuania missing an important opportunity to reinforce its soft power?
This paper is part of the project “Music and Politics: An Analysis of Protest Songs and Lithuanian Singing Revolution”, funded by a grant (No. MIP-14172) from the Research Council of Lithuania.
1. Introduction
The present article looks at the social phenomenon known as Singing Revolution, occurred in the Baltic states during the last years of Soviet domination, focusing on the case of Lithuania, particularly in the perspective of what, after Joseph Nye (1990 and 2004), has been called Soft Power. Despite the absolute centrality of the Singing Revolution in the Lithuanian struggle for independence, the Lithuanian academic and political institutions have devoted only a minor effort to analyse these phenomena and repertoires. Moreover, very timid were the attempts to academically promote them at international level, often resulting in international ignorance and misunderstandings.
What is the position of the Singing Revolution in the current Lithuanian intellectual and institutional discourses? Could the phenomenon become an important tool for cultural and diplomatic promotion of Lithuania abroad? Is Lithuania missing an important opportunity to reinforce its soft power?
2. The concept of soft power
Originally formulated in Nye 1990, soft power (SP, from now on) became a fully-defined concept in Nye 2004, where it is defined as
(...) the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies. (...) When you can get others to admire your ideals and to want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and carrots to move them in your direction. Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many values like democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are deeply seductive. (...) But attraction can turn to repulsion if we act in an arrogant manner and destroy the real message of our deeper values (Nye 2004: x)
By extension, “SP” is an expression we can use also in relation a) to smaller communities, and b) to the processes that occur within them. In the first case, we can basically trace an axis that goes from single individuals to the largest communities, and detect SP in all the steps that go from one extreme to another. Of course, single persons can exercise endless forms of SP over other people: their charm, elegance, job, social/geographical origins, ideas, and so forth.
Secondly, SP is not just a form of communication, that goes from an A source to a B destination, A and B being members of two different groups. A and B can also belong to one single group, with SP operating with specific dynamics that encourage that group to progress in a given direction. This characteristic, too, covers the whole spectrum of communities, even including the special, proprioceptive, case of single individuals, who are certainly inspired by their successful features to develop them even further (e.g., career achievements, body fitness...).
Essentially, when SP goes from one group to another, it basically serves as promoter of the values of the former group, it builds a reputation, it attracts and persuades people, etc. When SP goes from one group to the same group, it mostly works as a reminder of the values of that group, it builds self-confidence, sense of commitment, etc.
Naturally, SP, as an expression, acquires particular sense when placed in opposition with “hard” power (Nye 2004: 7). Command, coercion and inducement are the three typical forms of behaviour of hard power, while agenda setting, attraction and co-option are the typical ones of SP. Then, Nye continues (2004: 8), when it comes to resources, hard power will likely use force, sanctions, payments and bribes, while SP will mostly operate through institutions, values, culture and policies.
Needless to say, SP does not only work “in positive”. Attention towards a certain individual/community/country can also occur in terms of negative associations with the SP resources. Such effect can be generated by at least four conditions: absence of resources, bad reputation, lack of reputation, loss of reputation. If we take the example “universities”, we can see that these three conditions can all have their negative impact on a given group (say, a city). When a city has no university (absence), it may provoke such comments like: “Lousy city! There is not even a university here”. When a university exists but it does not have a good reputation, the effect may be something like: “Imagine! They have one of the country’s worst universities, here”. Thirdly, a lack of reputation may be expressed with comments like: “Really? I didn’t even know they had a university, here!”, which is not necessarily better. Finally, a loss of reputation can be expressed with sentences like “Poor devils! They even had a university here, and look at them now!”.
Suffering from this effect may be both small communities (which pay the price of under-exposure – and this, we shall see, is one problem with Lithuania) and big/central communities (which pay the price of over-exposure – as in the obvious case of USA, which gathers both positive and negative SP inputs in great quantities).
Since I am not particularly interested in problematizing the issue, but rather applying it in its essential nature, I will not mention the various debates that followed Nye’s establishment of the concept: obviously – like nearly every theoretical formulation in human knowledge – SP too is subject to a fair share of criticism and controversies, but for the purposes of this article we can take Nye’s reflections as the main point of reference. In any case, one must be at least aware of the fact that SP was criticized in its general theoretical usefulness (e.g., Ferguson 2004), in its interaction with (as opposed to “difference from”) hard power (e.g., Gallarotti 2010) and in the presence (as opposed to absence) of coercive and manipulative aspects in its action (e.g., Bially Mattern 2005).
2.1. Soft power and popular music
There is no doubt that popular music is an important component of a country’s SP. Some of them have pop music as their main source: it is possibly the case with Iceland and Björk, Argentina and tango (Maradona being the main contender here), Jamaica and reggae (or, straight away, Bob Marley), and so forth. Not to mention that specific cities, otherwise not really at the centre of the world, so to speak, may become it as the result of a popular music act or event: see the cases of Liverpool with The Beatles or Woodstock with the 1969 festival (incidentally: one may say that the SP of the Finnish town of Imatra has relied for about 25 years on the fact that the International Semiotics Institute, and relative Summer School, were there).
The incidence of popular music on SP calculations can be in fact rather strong. The Institute for Government in London, UK, is actively committed in measuring this concept at global level, by using the so-called “Soft Power metrics”, which are fully explained in McClory 2012, but which basically consist of: International Purpose/Role, Cultural Output, Global Leadership, SP Icons (meaning, world-famous VIP’s who bring a positive image of their own country, like – say – Jose Mujica for Uruguay), Cuisine, National Airline/Major Airport, Commercial Brands. A great example of the centrality of popular music in such calculations is the comparison between the 2011 and 2012 charts (published in McClory 2012, in various web sources and also in the November issues of The Monocle monthly magazine). At the end of 2011 the first 12 countries were the following:
1) USA
2) UK
3) France
4) Germany
5) Australia
6) Sweden
7) Japan
8) Switzerland
9) Canada
10) Netherlands
11) Norway
12) Denmark
One year later, the result was this:
1) UK
2) USA
3) Germany
4) France
5) Sweden
6) Japan
7) Denmark
8) Switzerland
9) Australia
10) Canada
11) South Korea
12) Norway
Among the interesting changes, arguably the most outstanding ones are the first place of UK (against the virtually unbeatable USA), and the appearance, at the 11th place, of South Korea, not exactly the most predictable country, in charts of this kind (for the record, it was 14th, in 2011).
UK's first place was entirely due to the massive display of popular culture occurred during the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and, more importantly, the Olympic Games, with that impressive opening ceremony, which reminded the world of Britain’s achievements and influence. When looking back at that ceremony, the importance of popular music in the process is plain to see: how many countries, in arranging a ceremony of that type, could count on a soundtrack composed of “Satisfaction”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Imagine”, “Heroes”, dozens of others, and wrap it all up with Paul McCartney (in flesh and blood) singing “Hey Jude” to the whole world?
When it comes to Korea, if any of the readers is now thinking “No, it can't be that!”, the explanation can be read on the same report: “South Korea made a significant jump up the rankings after a very good 2012. Korea hosted a number of global summits, historically outperformed at the Olympics, and – of course – gave the world Gangnam” (McClory 2012: 12).
Emphasis on “of course”: a global one-hit-wonder is indeed able, almost single-handedly, to produce a three-place leap in a world chart of SP. In other words: the role of popular music in the determination of a country’s SP is very difficult to underestimate. Matthew Fraser provides an interesting application of Nye’s concept to the specific environment of popular music (Fraser 2005: 170-221), and – what matters in the present article – there is a specific passage about musical forms of protest within the Iron Curtain (Fraser 2005: 183-184). Mentioned here are the notorious access to Western pop music via the frequencies of Radio Luxembourg and Radio Free Europe, the boomerang effect of banning rock in East Germany (granting it the very attractive status of “forbidden fruit”), the protest punk songs in Hungary during the 1970’s, and... and just when the Singing Revolution would appear as the most obvious example of the list, the book turns to a (laudable, incidentally) critique to Adorno’s inadequacy to speak of popular music (Fraser 2005: 184-185). Lithuania, the whole Baltic area and the Singing Revolution are totally missing in the picture, replaced by examples that, though very significant, were not representative of a structured, organized movement.
This, we shall see, is exactly the problem.
3. The Singing Revolution
“Singing Revolution” is a conventional name for a series of events (often, but not only, related to music) occurring between 1987 and 1991, during (and most of all as a support of) the independence movements in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The term was coined by the Estonian artist Heinz Valk, who employed this expression for the first time while commenting the spontaneous mass singing of Estonian traditional songs during the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds, in 1988. Music became during those years the main expressive vehicle for conveying independentist and nationalist messages, in at least three ways: 1) specific new music was written with a distinctive (or metaphoric) political significance; 2) Traditional national music was performed for the sole fact of being “national” (as opposed to “Soviet”, or “Russian”), regardless of its contents; 3) Forbidden music, no matter what, was sung and performed as an intrinsic act of insubordination (e.g., rock genres, so despised by Soviet authorities).
The phenomenon did not take a coherent shape across the three Baltic states, and that possibly adds to the charm of it: there was no specific agreement among the three countries, but rather times were mature for a phenomenon like this to emerge spontaneously in more than one place with a similar cultural background and political condition. Nevertheless, a few events (directly or indirectly related with the Singing Revolution) were organized as a common action. Certainly, the so-called Baltic Way (another event that would deserve a clipart, to my mind), occupies a special position, here: a chain of about two million people holding hands for 675.5 km uninterruptedly from Vilnius to Tallinn, during August 23, 1989, in the occasion of the the 50th anniversary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
The Lithuanian part of the Singing Revolution revolved around the so-called Sąjūdis (“movement”), a group of 35 intellectuals and artists established in 1988 to support the perestroika and glasnost processes. Conceived as a way to modernize USSR and soften its policies, these policies had for many Soviet countries the effect of re-awakening the national consciences, and became the main catalyst for the various independence movements throughout the Union. Indeed, after the initial support to perestroika and glasnost, Sąjūdis soon replaced its action with specific claims on national independence (restoring Lithuanian language, conducting campaigns of environmental protection, revealing facts and documents about Stalinism, disclosing the secret protocols of the Nazi-Soviet pact, etc.). In the turning of few months, Sąjūdis had become the locomotive of the independence movement in Lithuania (for more, see Lieven 1993, Donskis 2002 and Miniotaite 2002).
Within all this process, music was an exceptionally central force. Like the other Baltic states, Lithuania had manifestations of spontaneous singing of old national songs, and composition of new (even more pinpointed) ones. Moreover, specific events, such as the so-called Rock March, took place: organized three years in a raw, from 1987 and 1989 (and then in the mid 1990’s, after the independence), Rock March was a travelling show around the main cities of Lithuania, with different pop bands performing. As mentioned, one main point was not just the performance of “protest” or “national” songs (or anyway songs whose themes may have been unwelcome by Soviet authorities): it was the idea itself of performing “forbidden (that is, typically western) genres” to be used as vehicle of protest. On the stages of the Rock March, Lithuanian audience could be exposed to heavy metal (through the band Katedra), punk (through the band Bix), straight rock (through the band Foje, which included the rising star and by now “spiritual leader” of modern Lithuanian rock, Andrius Mamontovas), not to mention the very peculiar case of Antis (on which I shall return in few lines). Bands from Latvia and Estonia would also appear, and that – too – was a sign: the three Baltic states were “together” in this enterprise.
The uniqueness of music, within the Lithuanian Sąjūdis, becomes even more evident when we consider that its acknowledged leader, and first president of the independent Lithuania, was Prof. Vytautas Landsbergis, a pianist and musicologist, and member of the artistic movement Fluxus (born in America, and usually known because of Yoko Ono’s and John Lennon’s involvement, but in fact founded and animated by Lithuanian artists like Jurgis “George” Mačiūnas and Jonas Mekas). Landsbergis has now become a rather controversial figure, often criticized for his aggressive and distinctive anti-Russian attitude, but in those days he was undoubtedly the most active and representative figure of the independence movement. As a musician and musicologist, one should not underrate his strong interest (in both performance and research) for Čiurlionis, himself a symbol of Lithuanian patriotism.
The list of Sąjūdis members involved in music does not end with Landsbergis: there were the composer Julius Juzeliūnas, the opera singer Vaclovas Daunoras, and most of all Algirdas Kaušpėdas, an architect-turned-to-singer, author and leader of the very influential band Antis. A true opinion leader, Kaušpėdas was behind four important stages of the Singing Revolution:
1) He was a co-founder of Sąjūdis, and one of its most proactive members.
2) He helped out resurrecting pre-Soviet Lithuanian tunes (including the national anthem, which is the one currently used), by touring Lithuania and literally asking local inhabitants (particularly elderly people) to sing them (there is a very nice sequence from Giedrė Žickytė’s documentary How we played revolution, which portrays him in this particular activity).
3) He co-organized and headlined the Rock March event (1987–1989); and finally.
4) He was the leader of this particular band, Antis.
Born almost as a joke, during a Christmas party, Antis became quickly a local musical sensation, one that provided the independence movement with several effective original compositions. An embodiment of post-modernism in music, Antis managed to build a powerful anti-Soviet farce through songs abounding in metaphors, allusions, double senses, parody and satire, all packaged in a very theatrical outfit, dominated by masks and costumes (themselves a metaphor of the Soviet people, forced to “appear” socially in a certain way, and having totally different needs and aspirations privately). The name itself, Antis, is a double-entendre. The word, in Lithuanian, means both “duck” and “media sensation”. So, officially the band was called “Duck”, but everybody knew that the real name referred to freedom of speech, censorship, media manipulation. Also, when directly addressed on the contents of their music (for instance, by the hosts of some Soviet musical program), the band would wear their “mask” and deliver answers such as that they were perfectly fine as every Soviet person should be. Once again: people would get the joke, and enjoy that sarcastic frontal attack to the authorities, gaining increasing confidence that independence was not anymore a utopia.
During the years of the Singing Revolution, Antis produced four albums, and nearly every song in them referred to some aspect of the Soviet oppression and “life”. As independence finally occurred, the band felt they had no longer a purpose, and amicably disbanded. Except that the demand for their music was so high (coupled with a desire, from many people’s side, to keep the memory of those feelings and values alive), that the band shortly reunited in two isolated occasions (in 1996 and 2003), and finally, in 2007, became fully-operative again, remaining still active as these lines are written (in fact, a new album was just released in 2013).
3.1. The soft power of the Singing Revolution: success of an obvious connection
There is no doubt, to my mind, that a band like Antis managed to survive without particular problems only because the perestroika was fully operating. In other times, we would be speaking of Antis as a group of heroic patriots tortured and sent to Siberia for life. Nevertheless, the ability of catching the wave of those significant historical changes is by all means a merit, and the three Baltic States were certainly in the frontline, among all Soviet countries, in these activities.
Also, there is no doubt that it was also (perhaps mostly) thanks to all the pacific and/or artistic initiatives promoted by the three independence movements that the international community became increasingly aware of the national claims of these countries, ultimately acknowledging their right to exist as independent States. Iceland, notoriously, was the first one (in February 11, 1991), then in September, USA, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Malta, San Marino, Portugal, Romania, Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia followed in domino effect. On September 17, Lithuania was welcomed as a member of the United Nations along with Estonia and Latvia.
The Singing Revolution was one of the most relevant SP sources for Lithuania, in its classic sense (from one group to another), promoting the country as such (and not as a Soviet Republic), with all its values, characteristics, customs and choices. Being what it was (that is, a musical phenomenon), it certainly was particularly effective in raising international sympathies. To paraphrase Žickytė’s documentary, the revolution was not made, fought, organized or else. The revolution was “played”. Few other strategies could have been as powerful as this one, once we are comparing a 3-million-people country against a country 260 times bigger and 50 times more populated.
On the other hand, even more decisive in the independence process was the other important function of SP we mentioned above, that is, the one that operates on the same community it is generated within. Possibly more than any other action taken during the Sąjūdis, the Singing Revolution was for Lithuanians the strongest reminder of what they used to and wanted to be: an independent country, with those values, that flag, that language, that identity. And those songs, of course. Leonidas Donskis goes as far as to define the Singing Revolution (and Sąjūdis in general) as the ultimate Lithuanian embodiment of the “generous and noble-spirited traditions of the Romantic ethos of liberal nationalism” (2002: 2), up to become the actual highlight of Lithuanian recent history.
3.2. ...and failure of an obvious opportunity
Given such “epic” value of the phenomenon, it is sadly remarkable to notice that neither Lithuanian authorities nor specific scholars have devoted anything more than a minor effort to study, analyze and promote the events and repertoires of the Singing Revolution. The whole phenomenon, as such, is very seldom mentioned in books and essays dealing with “protest songs” or generally the relation between arts and politics. No Lithuanian singer or songwriter does ever appear as the “Lithuanian Pete Seeger” or the “Woody Guthrie of the Baltics”. No edition of the Rock March is ever presented to the international readership as a “Lithuanian Woodstock”.
Certainly, it is not irrelevant that the entire movement (Antis, first and foremost) was animated by a rightist-conservative intelligentsia. The studies on protest songs (and, to say it all, the whole area of popular music studies) is literally dominated by leftist scholarship, most members of which still having one or two issues in admitting that also Soviet Union was a dictatorship, and that – therefore – a democratic protest can also originate from the right side of the political spectrum. Let alone music per se, where the notion of “protest” seems to be possible only if a songwriter plays a guitar with the inscription “This machine kills fascists”.
The second problem is that popular music studies are no less alien to ethnic and cultural biases than traditional musicology. If studies on classical music are infamously euro- and male-centric, popular music studies are glamorously Western- and particularly Anglo-American-centric. To make a specific example related to protest songs, Phull 2008, analyzes 52 supposedly historically-crucial protest songs, with the suspicious result that only two of them are not from either UK or USA: The Wailers' “Get Up, Stand Up” (Jamaica) and Nena's “99 Luftballoons” (Germany). Let alone the Baltic States, but the fact that songs like “Senzeni Na?” (a sheer anti-apartheid anthem in South Africa) or Inti Illimani’s “El Pueblo Unido” have to be ignored to give room to Michael and Janet Jackson’s “Scream” or Pulp’s “Common People” (no disrespect meant: I am only pointing out the historical relevance of these songs within any movement of political protest), is only another confirmation that before criticizing the (many) biases of traditional musicology, popular music studies should take a serious look at their own.
Having said that, the rest of the responsibilities falls entirely on Lithuanian cultural policies and their operators. At national level, there are a few (not even many) studies written in Lithuanian: then, as we move into the field of international exposure of such an important phenomenon, emptiness dominates. No Lithuanian scholar has ever bothered to write a history (or an analysis) of the Singing Revolution in English. Other cultural objects, too, are generally missing from the picture. Two Lithuanian movies (the mentioned documentary How we played the revolution, and a fiction film called The Children from the Hotel America) address the topic of the Singing Revolution, and they were also presented in film festivals abroad (therefore, English subtitles do exist!): but when the DVDs were released, no English subtitles were anymore featured, preventing the items to have any impact whatsoever on the international market (in other words: taking for granted that they will not).
Moreover, very timid were the attempts to academically promote the Singing Revolution at international level, resulting in international ignorance and misunderstandings. Thomson 1992 (not exactly a Lithuanian surname, as one can notice) remains the most evident international exposure of the phenomenon, otherwise the only Baltic country that really took proper care of this enormous cultural heritage was Estonia (in particular through such studies as Vesilind 2008). In Estonian cultural policies and scholarship, the Singing Revolution is seen as a major event, one that not only contributed to the country’s independence, but which in fact typifies it. Research and promotion of the phenomenon take special care in making it internationally visibly, with publications and documentaries in English, plus – what is more significant – the inclusion of the Singing Revolution as a founding historical event in nearly any general treatise of Estonian history and/or culture. There is a far cry between two similarly-titled and similarly-intended books like the mentioned Donskis 2002 (Identity and Freedom: Mapping Nationalism and Social Criticism in Twentieth-Century Lithuania) and Subrenat 2004 (Estonia: Identity and Independence). Lithuanian “identity”, for Donskis, results in one single mention to the Singing Revolution (the one quoted above, which ironically celebrates its importance); Estonian “identity”, for Subrenat, is an entire chapter called “The ‘Singing Revolution’ and Independence Regained”.
Finally, if this (lack of) literature review was an award, the winner in the category “best missed opportunity to talk about the Singing Revolution” would probably be Miniotaite 2002. The amazing fact, here, is that this book is programmatically written to talk about the “nonviolent resistance” in Lithuania:
This monograph seeks to highlight the important role that nonviolent action has played in Lithuania, especially in the reassertion of independence in the 1980s and 1990s. [...] I seek (...) to draw attention to an often ignored strand of the Lithuanian experience, one that – given greater understanding and development – could help diminish the prospect of a recurrence of such destructive national and communal violence. (Miniotaite 2002: 7).
The book that has the perfect historical and thematic frame to discuss the Lithuanian Singing Revolution, devotes no more than five (!) lines in the whole text (pp. 30 and 31) to any topic related to the Singing Revolution: the organization of the first “Rock March” (erroneously called “Rock’n’Roll March”, among other things: as if Bix and Katedra came to play “Tutti Frutti” and “Blue Suede Shoes” instead of punk and metal).
As a result, little by little, the Singing Revolution is turning from a Baltic into an Estonian-only phenomenon, and, needless to say, this is also what the international community, by reflex perceives (e.g., the Canadian documentary Cultures in conflict focuses entirely on the Estonian Singing Revolution, with basically no mention to Lithuania and Latvia). Latvia has recently made a significant step, with the publication of Smidchens 2013: by now, thus, Lithuania remains the only country not to have properly presented its contribution to the Singing Revolution to the international community.
Lithuania therefore experiences at least three of the above-mentioned boomerang-effects of this potentially-outstanding SP resource. In international communication (“from one group to another”), we witness a clear “lack of reputation”: quite simply, most people ignore that such a thing like the Singing Revolution ever happened in Lithuania. In internal communication (within Lithuania), we witness at the same time an “absence of the resource” and a “loss of reputation”: respectively, the Singing Revolution is underrated or even overlooked in its SP potential, and – more and more often – a general feeling of “those glorious days of true national spirit are over” is spreading among the Lithuanian community, in response to a perceived crisis of cultural and moral values.
The present article, and the whole work of the research project mentioned in the first footnote, are meant as a small contribution to fill this gap.
Note: This article is part of the project “Music and Politics: An Analysis of Protest Songs and Lithuanian Singing Revolution”, funded by a grant (No. MIP-14172) from the Research Council of Lithuania.
References
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