For me these are not just concert recordings — these are documents from my travels with the album Stories of Stonia which has literally taken me around the world! This live album represents moments of meeting with the audiences with whom I often don’t share the same language but with whom — for this one hour — we share the common space and time in music. During that time, we share and go through the same feelings — the joy, the sorrow, the emptiness, the sadness and return back to the euphoria, the trance from these repetitive rhymes and melodies that are rooted in the ancient runosong tradition. As music for me is always about life itself, the songs cover the whole spectrum of emotions. I experience them every time I am on stage. But I am always happy on stage – no matter how light or rough the travel has been, because singing gets me into another state of mind. Singing is a meditation, allowing me to bathe in peace for these brief moments in this otherwise restless world.
Mari Kalkun - Tõistmuudu (live with Estonian National Male Choir)
I have been singing these songs live in 20 countries — can you imagine!? I’ve been singing amongst the real dinosaur skeletons in Brussels and megabats resting on the trees in Australia at WOMADelaide festival. I’ve been moved to tears by a Maori welcome in New Zealand and enchanted by the hospitality and smoothness of Japanese culture. And returning back home after some of these very long travels, it has been an enlightening experience to see all the beauty at home in the whole of Estonia with a completely fresh look again. The live song ‘Leelu’ with improvised lyrics made on the spot incorporates a bit of that feeling – the song is returning to its nest and finding beauty in the first snowflakes falling.
The most valuable understanding from all these travels is that human nature is universal. No matter how different our cultures are – we experience life as human beings through the same scale of emotions. Some of the most powerful moments have been in singing together with the audience during the concerts (you can also hear this in some of the tracks!). This is an element from Estonian singing culture that I always try to incorporate into my own live performances, to bring a feeling of simple unity and belonging that we are so much lacking in this world. I had craved for the form of music that I can create in a moment. The songs of Stories of Stonia evolved so much in solo live concerts that many of them became quite different from the recorded album versions. This became a good reason to release the live version of the album you are holding in your hands.
I am so thankful for all the festivals and venues who have hosted us. I am super proud of our small, yet powerful and super effective team: my manager Marili Jõgi, sound engineer Taavo Teras, agent Juliana Volož. I am happy and honored to be welcomed warmly in the Real World Records family.
Behind these recordings are countless hours of touring – travelling on trains, planes, cars, taxis, buses, golf cars (particularly at WOMAD festivals they have this nice way of transportation), sleeping probably more than a hundred nights in foreign hotels far from home. This is the life of a musician. My sound engineer Taavo has been travelling with me everywhere we go — thank you Taavo for your always supportive, positive energy, big smile and the best live sound!
Our families at home have always been supporting this crazy life. Without you all, we would not have made it that far!
Wishing you love and music,
MARI KALKUN
Listen
Credits
Helisalvestused kontsertidelt on linti võtnud Mari helikunstnik /Recordings from live concerts are all recorded by Mari’s sound engineer Taavo Teras
Kokkumäng / Mixing: Martin Kikas (Ö Stuudio)
Lõppviimistlus / Mastering: Tim Oliver (Real World Studios)
Plaadikujundus / Album design: Peeter Laurits
Plaadifirma / Record label: Real World Records
Management: Marili Jõgi (Moon Management)
Agent: Juliana Volož (JV Promotion)
Eesti Rahvusmeeskoori dirigent / Conductor of Estonian National Male Choir: Mikk Üleoja
Tekstitoimetus / Text editing: Päiv Dengo
Toetaja / Supporter: Eesti Kultuurkapital (Cultural Endowment of Estonia)
Suur tänu! / Thank you!
Eesti Kontsert & Lauri Aav, Kuldar Schüts, Eesti Rahvusmeeskoor / Estonian National Male Choir, Saale Fischer, FMM Sines, all kind organizers and open-hearted audiences.
With a voice that seems to speak to us from the heart of the Estonian forest, Mari Kalkun’s music is at once of a place and deeply personal. Rooted in ancient Estonian and Võru traditions, but beautifully fresh and contemporary, Stories of Stonia reaches back to very old layers of tradition to imagine what Mari's ancestors would have thought and sung about the world in an era of skyscraper, steel and metal.
Land Of My Other is a place of memories and melodies, lyricism and lore. A place of sunlight, faerie-tales and rowan trees; of grief, incarceration and thunder in darkness. A place where ancestral trauma and colonial injustice meet blazing pride, romantic self-rule and hands held in a circle in the sea. Where songs are sung with feeling, instruments are everywhere and music lives deep in the bones.
