Sunday morning began with the participants’ procession which started in the centre of town and ended at the Song Festival Grounds. The weather was just perfect for the procession – not too hot and not too cold. The crowd which had gathered by the route of the procession merrily greeted the participants whose number amounted to almost 34,500.

When the participants finally reached the Song Festival Grounds each choir and group of dancers or musicians was warmly welcomed and their names were announced to the audience. The song celebration began little after 1 p.m. and the first ones to perform were the folk musicians and the elementary school's choirs.
By that time almost 23,000 singers, 8,000 dancers and about 45,000 spectators had gathered to the Song Festival Grounds.

In the evening the stage was conquered by the rock choir. The young singers enjoyed themselves completely and were greeted by the joyous voices of the audience. The audience asked all of the songs performed by the rock choir – Voice of Mountains, You Are Beautiful My Fatherland and Bucolic Song of Livland – to be performed again. These songs were also so inspiring for the general leaders of the dance and song celebration that at one point they were standing in the aisles dancing to the voices of the children. And, all of a sudden they were joined by our president, Mr Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

The celebration ended with the joint choirs gathering on the stage. Together with the author Siiri Sisask the choir performed the song What Land is it?. This sent shivers down the spines of many in the audience. The joint choir also performed Ülo Vinter and Enn Vetemaa’s Song of the Nordic Country conducted by Ants Üleoja. This was the singers’ and dancers’ joint answer to the main question of this year’s celebration – What Land is it?
The celebration ended with the title song by Olav Ehala and Viiu Härm – The Wide World Begins in a Small Land – with the artistic director of the song celebration, Veronika Portsmuth, standing in front of the joint choirs. And then, both the performers and the audience requested one more song to be sung – the song which everyone wanted to hear was Peep Sarapik and Juhan Liiv’s He Flies Towards the Beehive. The man standing before the choirs was Raul Talmar.

The performers gathered to the Song Festival Stage came from all counties in Estonia. All in all there were 22,239 singers and 2,111 musicians; the number of dancers and gymnasts during the dance celebrations on Friday and Saturday was 7,554. There were also participants from Canada, China, Finland, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

People took great interest in the song and dance celebration. The latest data on ticket sales shows that 45,932 song celebration tickets and 31,350 dance celebration tickets were sold.

During the celebration week 7,100 kilograms of bread and 45,000 kilograms of soup were eaten. The number of portions of dessert was 106,400. The Song Festival Soup has also been a popular sales item – namely, by today 22,400 jars of Song Festival Soup have been sold in stores in Estonia.

Photo: Song Celebration rocks, by Mikk Mihkel Vaabel