Tag Archives | Lithuania

Oh No! The Wind is Blowing Again

We end our Eastern European adventure with our twisted take on a Lithuanian sutartine.
Earlier this week we sang “Tureja Liepa,” an ancient song from Lithuania that conjures the image of a lime tree swaying in a strong wind. Over the course of our Eastern European season we found many ways to take old songs and transform them into tunes we could sing with kids in class. Inspired by the fact that the original “Tureja Liepa” is a Lithuanian sutartine, a song often sung in rounds, we count to three, one by one,  then we raise our arms like swaying lime trees and break off branches.

Nine Branches of the Lime Tree

Today you want to sing a traditional Lithuanian song. Yes, you do.

In the course of our Eastern European explorations we sang a lot of songs that are OLD. “Tureja Liepa” is a traditional Lithuanian song about a lime tree that suffers through a storm. The branches break off one by one…fun! In the original the singer pleas for one branch to remain so the cuckoo can roost in it. The singer then asks a mother who has nine daughters to leave one of them to be married. The tree in this song has nine branches, which makes sense when you know that the number nine was a magical number in ancient Lithuania. Sing along with “Tureja Liepa” in this video as we prepare the bride for her wedding.

The Baltic Way is Our Way Too

In class this week we introduce our kiddos to “The Baltic Way,” the 1989 “hands across the Baltics” 400 mile human chain that unified the nations against the Soviet Union. In our humble how-to video we celebrate the Baltic nations’ strength, bravery and pride by linking arms in class. (Forgive us for mumbling through the Estonian nation anthem.)

The Baltics are THE BEST

All Around This World map of Eastern Europe featuring the Baltic States.

This week in our online classes we ventured to the Baltic Sea, where we embraced the Baltic States — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Throughout the upcoming week we’ll group the three nations together for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways, but we’ll still recognize that each makes its own own historical, linguistic and musical way. We’ll also do a lot of public choral singing and overcome an empire by holding hands.

Hands Across the Baltics

What was the Baltic Way?

On August 23, 1989, more than a million people from the Baltic states linked hands to form a human chain almost 400 miles long in an event called “The Baltic Way.” The massive hand-holding demonstrated the unity of the people of the Baltics in demanding independence from the Soviet Union.  If this doesn’t remind you of the 1986 “Hands Across America,” if you sing, maybe it will.