International folklore festival “Baltica 2015” will also sound in Rēzekne municipality parish

From 15 to 19 July, the International folklore festival “Baltica 2015” will be held in Rēzekne municipality, Riga City, Riga and several other cities of Latvia. The most scandalous event of the festival – a concert – will begin on 18 July at 17.30, Anchupan Valley (kartodroma), and the same stage will musicize both domestic folklore clusters and visitors from Belarus, Georgia, Portugal, Norway, Ukraine and other countries. But before that, in the midday of July 18, folklore songs can be heard and singing in nine parish of Rezekne municipality: Berzgale, Verems, Rikava, Dricans, Nautrens, Feimas, Nagles, Maltā and Lendes. In the table below, a list of folklore sets and ethnographic ensembles to be applied to parish centres.

The folklore festival “Baltica” will include ethnographic ensembles, folklore sets, People's music groups, storytellers and other individual performers from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and other countries. This year, the number of participants in Baltica will be the largest festival history – around 3500, including 240 folklore sets and ethnographic ensembles from Latvia. The festival organisers know that the senior member will be 91 years old, but only two years later.

“Baltica 2015” theme will be “inheritance”. “The festival's task is to show the living, inherited tradition where different generations are faced,” emphasizes “Baltica 2015” artistic leader Mars Mellene. “Traditional culture has enormous creative potential – it brings together many different experiences that have gone out of time. The mandate of the heir is to find something new in view of the previous one. The challenge is to realize whether you're more creative than a tradition – can you just reproduce or bring something new to a tradition.”

The festival “Baltica” is an important event for the Baltic peoples that demonstrates traditional cultural values – songs, instrumental music, narrative, toy, dance, as well as People's applied art, crafts, and other forms of traditional cultural or artistic expression. “Baltica” has been held annually in Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia since 1987. This year the festival is held in Latvia for the 10 th time. In the first festival in 1988, 28 folklore groups participated in Latvia, this year – 204 pools from Latvia, as well as questionnaires from 10 foreign countries and four foreign Latvian clusters.

The international folklore festival “Baltica” is organised by the Latvian National Cultural Centre in cooperation with city and municipality municipalities.