Latvia is alive with song again

Every five years Latvia stages a week-long song and dance festival and this year my wife’s Latvian cousins got us tickets to two of the biggest events. I had no idea what to expect. The first evening, in a vast open-air arena in the Mezaparks forest outside Riga, while the light faded behind the tall pines, we watched a 10,000-strong choir dressed in varied costumes – the men in cream or grey flared frock coats and black boots, the women in flower crowns, tartan shawls and striped skirts – as they sang traditional songs. The next day in the Daugava stadium we thrilled to an astonishing 17,000 amateur dancers swirling in intricate and flawless formations to bagpipes, folk and jazz. My cousins-in-law, some of whom took part, explained that rehearsals take the full five years and about 2 per cent of the country’s entire population performs. Here is patriotism of a benign and peaceful kind, a love of tradition and a sense of ease that we seem to have almost lost in Britain: no boasting, preaching, apologising or straining at modern reinterpretation.