Over the past month or so, Canadians have been dealing with noise: some with the literal, terrible noise of truck horns and protestors yelling, and the rest of us with the noise of the online arguments, the media, the videos and podcasts and vitriol. It is exhausting on top of everything else that is exhausting.
The tactic of using trucks (and their horns) for this protest is smart political theatre. It is hard to ignore such a large presence, and it makes the protestors take up a lot of space and air, even if there aren’t very many actual people. For better or worse, we can’t turn away from it.
I’m not here to get into the whys or why nots of these protests, but I do want to shine the spotlight on another way of doing things, one that is unexpected: singing together.
I’m reading John Green’s book The Anthropocene Reviewed: essays on a human-centered planet. In it, he has an essay about the song “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein show Carousel. The song has been adopted by fans of the Liverpool football team, and they’ll sing it together in celebration of a win, and in communal grief over a loss.
Green points out that:
These songs are made great by the communities singing them. They are assertions of unity in sorry and unity in triumph…Though our dreams be tossed and blown, still we sing ourselves and one another into courage. (12)
This brought to mind the Singing Revolution in Estonia in 1987-1991, where Estonians literally sang their way to independence from Soviet occupation. They gathered in large numbers, joined hands, and sang their traditional folk songs that had been banned for decades by the Soviets. There was nothing the Soviets could do against tens of thousands of people peacefully singing together, and it was a major factor in the Soviets’ retreat from Estonia. Similar peaceful/singing revolutions happened in Lithuania and Latvia.
The Estonians sang songs of freedom, of love for their country, of peace. Singing together brought them courage, and power. If you have never heard of the Singing Revolution, watch this trailer from a documentary about it that gives the smallest taste.
In 1989, an estimated 2,000,000 people from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia joined hands and formed a human chain. The Baltic Way, stretched 675km across all three countries, connecting the capital cities. The people in the chain held their place and sang their songs in direct defiance of the Soviets. How powerful, to hold hands and sing together.
Estonians still gather every five years for the Laulupidu, the national song festival: 30,000 people on stage, with another 80,000 people watching (and singing along, I’m sure). Together, they sing the songs that they know brought their freedom and independence.
I get chills just thinking about it. Trucks are loud. But maybe voices singing together can be louder.