Celebrating creative freedom at Tallinn Music Week 2021

Kultuurikatel’s tall red brick chimney seems to disappear into the night sky. On its side are projected the words Station Narva. Tallinn Music Week’s sister festival takes place every year in Narva, an intriguing post-industrial city on the edge of Estonia, separated from Russia only by a narrow river. On the Station Narva stage are fearless hard-hitting acts from all corners of the world.

One of them is Aigel, a Russian electro/hip-hop duo that brings together the minimalist, noisy, electro beats of musician Ilya Baramiya and the poetic words and seductive vocals of Aigel Gaisina. Aigel also have a tense relationship with freedom: their first album 1190 explores the topic of incarceration drawing on Gaisina’s personal experience of when her partner was in prison. Whether atmospheric or upbeat, sung or rapped, their tracks always project a dark, somewhat austere intensity and propulsive beats contrasted by beautifully honest vocals.

On stage, Gaisina’s charismatic presence holds the audience hostage as she sings, raps or speaks her poems in Russian and Tatar with conviction, honesty and pain so powerful that all language barriers seem to break down. But it would not give Baramiya the credit he deserves to overlook how his deep groove fills the whole room and gets the crowds moving.

I’ve tried to categorise the music of Mart Avi. I’ve only reached the conclusion that putting a label on it would be unfair if it wasn’t impossible. Avant-pop, future pop, art pop, avant-garde, electronic are all fitting tags but somewhat incomplete. Bowiesque crooning vocals, manipulated sounds and musical fragments borrowed from jazz, soul, a hint of IDM or breakbeat, shape into otherworldly sonic places in which to get lost. Akin to losing yourself in an unfamiliar city: for a brief moment you think you recognise a street, a shop, but end up instead being led down another maze of lights and sounds, surrounded by unfamiliar people. His latest single, Tides, takes a new path on the edge of more conventional song writing, with regular beats and synth providing a more linear thread.

On stage, Mart Avi croons and dances in ways that remind of Bowie, Elvis or Jarvis Cocker, but doesn’t connect with the audience in a direct way - his gaze reaches beyond and above the crowd and he leaves virtually no time between songs for cheers or applause. Instead, he draws the public into a world he has crafted from sounds and film clips as diverse as Kurosawa samurai duels, Nicholas Brothers tap dancing sequences or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons.

When I ask Avi about freedom, he replies with a quote by a 19th century samurai, Yamaoka Tesshū: “Deport yourself naturally, like moonbeams flooding into a leaky cottage”. He goes on to explain: “The context here is that of a sword-fight. Crafting a song can feel like participating in a duel. Especially singing. You are focused, you slash at the sounds and the sounds strike back and at some point you merge into close contact – you feel free as that is all there is at that given moment”

An unexpected answer that somehow gives more insight into the mind of a unique artist.

Another artist who found the creative courage to bare her soul is manna. The young singer stamped onto the scene two years ago with her fresh brand of R&B and her mellow voice. Since then, she has collaborated with electronic and hip-hop artists including Yasmyn, another rising star of the Estonian R&B scene.

Manna’s 2021 LP I can do anything IF I WANT TO sees her explore different genres with lo-fi aesthetics - alternative pop, trip hop, sometimes descending into hardcore chaos - before bouncing back into more upbeat and polished R&B. Bringing her vocals closer, manna takes listeners on an intimate two-part journey from teenage angst to blossoming – albeit scarred – adulthood.

On stage, the singer gives an uncompromising and theatrical performance, surrounded by dancer-actresses playing, shouting, provoking and aggressing. The performance feels like a confession from a wounded friend, but also casts a caustic glance at the experiences of young women in today’s world.

Manna belongs to a generation of artists who have only experienced Estonia as a free country. Whilst she acknowledges her privilege, she also argues that the root of creativity is within, not in our surroundings. “If I would’ve been born in the time where Estonia wasn’t a free country, I would still make art, music. I would still be the same stubborn punk I am now, I just would have been hated for it.”