DOOM 94

"I’m finding, especially in this centenary year, there are many interviews with people who were major musicians in the late 1980s, beginning of the 90s. They are seen as very important people not simply for being musicians, but for having the courage to bring ideas about independence and political freedom into their work. There was as music group, the Lithuanian rock band Antis, who are still performing today. Early on, they began to gain a lot of media attention. People started coming en masse to their concerts, followed closely by the police, of course, as they were seen as a disruptive force. There was a Lithuanian documentary film that came out not too long ago called How We Played the Revolution , which talks a lot about what they were doing, and how important music was at that time. This was a very public form of resistance. People saw that expression was possible. When I talk with Estonian friends, they’ve also mentioned a few groups that were saying things in their music that at the time you couldn’t—really shouldn’t —say. It’s no coincidence that in the history of the Baltic States, national song festivals were an integral part of the national awakening. Music has very much played a role in the identity of Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, and also what they came to think was politically possible in the late stages of the Soviet Union. Exactly! Jānis Joņevs’s is a coming of age story, and the coming of age of the protagonist is very much a metaphor for the coming of age of the country, you could say. He tells us how in those early 1990s conditions, it was all a bit wild still. The Iron Curtain had collapsed, but these did not become democratic states all at once. I don’t think people realise just how much of a Wild West it was in the early 90s. You had a lot of very murky business dealings. You had bombs going off; you had assassinations in broad daylight—not of political figures, but of business figures. At the time, there was a real lack of clarity about where the country was going, something Joņevs really draws out. It was a confusing place to grow up as a teenager."