According to a West Coast Latvian Song Festival insider, the management of last summer’s song festival hotel in Chicago had only one complaint about the Latvian guests who overtook their hotel last July: too many tried to cram into the elevators, causing one elevator to get stuck with approximately 27 guests onboard. This might explain the brightly colored signs warning guests not to crowd into elevators in San Francisco’s Cathedral Hill hotel, site of the recent 14th West Coast Latvian Song Festival.

I knew I was in for a good Latvian week soon after my arrival in California. A friend (Latvian, of course) and I flew to San Francisco, and did some driving and sightseeing for a few days before settling down in San Francisco for the festival, which ran from Aug. 28-Sept. 1. Our first evening was spent in Monterey, where we ran into Zinta Zariņa, head of the festival’s organizing committee, and her husband in a grocery store. The world sure is small when you’re Latvian!

I was surprised at the number of Latvians who made the trip to San Francisco from places such as Minneapolis or New York. But I suppose some of us have a great (or, maybe, unnatural) love for song festivals and wish to generously support the travel industry. Perhaps some had heard about previous West Coast song festivals—how the smaller scale make them very friendly and relaxed.

The festival began Aug. 28 with a cabaret performance and a cable car bar-hop aimed at the younger crowd. Naturally, the younger people on the cable car tour had a great time. And the reviews I heard of the cabaret were nothing but rave.

Friday, Aug. 29, was the busiest day for most festivalgoers. It began with the opening ceremony, which, like most such Latvian events, featured speeches that tended to run a few sentences too long.

But the entertainment portion featured the wonderful Los Angeles men’s choir, looking rather dashing in their tuxedos. These 18 men, many of whom are on the younger side (particularly for a Latvian choir), were a joy to listen to and watch, particularly when singing more energetic songs. The audience most enjoyed the song “Mūžu mūžos būs dziesma,” with its appropriate words: “Mūžu mūžos būs dziesma, mūžu mūžos alus smeķes; Un dziesmu svētkos ies meitenes baltās zeķēs.” Another song that emphasized their masculinity had the words, “Meitenes brunči ir karogs man” (at which point the choir saluted). The encore, “Manai dzimtenei,” also was a hit.

Unfortunately, the event began late, and ended only a few minutes before the next one was supposed to begin. This had major ramifications for the rest of the day.

The youth musical, “Gudrais padomiņš” (Good Advice), began a half-hour late, and suffered bouts of poor sound quality. Neither of these problems really distracted from the brilliance of this new musical. The text author and director Andra St. Invanyi Berkolds, composer and musical director Lolita Ritmane and lyricist Andris Ritmanis wrote a truly enjoyable musical and did a magnificent job encouraging an incredibly talented and spunky group of kids and teens to bring the story to life.

The main characters, Linda and Miķelis, played by 15-year-old Brita Stepe and 16-year-old Aleksanders Auzers, did truly commendable jobs in their large roles. And the talent of some of the younger performers was quite amazing. The very professional set decorations, costumes and lighting added additional panache to the musical. The longer-than-expected performance (fine for adults, but a bit long for the youngest audience members) featured eleven songs. Those of us willing to spend USD 6 could purchase a beautiful program book with all the song texts, a good synopsis and fun biographies of the performers. Everyone in the room, both audience and performers, seemed to enjoy this fabulous performance. I can only hope that the musical will be performed in the future—whether by the same or different cast—so that others will be able to relish the fun story of a Latvian-American teenage girl from California and a Latvian boy from the past.

The late start of “Gudrais padomiņš” and the short period of time between the two events, held in the same ballroom, caused technical problems for the next event, the concert by Latvia’s Iļģi. Their performance began 40 minutes late, and the first half of the concert was hampered by problems with sound. By the second set, the problems were partially overcome. The second set was especially energetic and certainly many would have preferred dancing to sitting at that point. Many of the older generation, apparently not knowing what to expect, did not enjoy the concert as much as those of us who already know and love one of Latvia’s best bands.

The day ended with a 1960s theme party, where quite a few attendees wore appropriate attire. The ‘60s music played by the always-great Latvian-American band, Los Pintos, was a great addition to the party.

The big event on Saturday, Aug. 30, was the folk dance performance. The theater, located in the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts complex, had 1,000 seats and every single one was occupied. Fortunately, even the view from the very last row, where I sat, was good.

For those of us used to large-scale, arena-filling performances featuring several hundred dancers, this performance, with dance groups from only a few cities, was a drastic change. Some audience members found it refreshing, others a bit dull. However, everyone I spoke to agreed on one thing: We couldn’t understand the significance or the need for an opening solo of a song about San Francisco—in English! I, for one, do not attend Latvian folk dance performances to hear songs in English. Of the many dances performed, the crowd favorites were anything where children performed and the dance “Zaļumballe,” performed by Seattle’s Trejdeksnītis, which saw an encore. It’s hard not to enjoy a dance in which a female dancer is thrown by two male dancers into the arms of another male dancer. The dancing was greatly enhanced by the live music provided by Denveras Jurmalnieki and Iļģi.

That evening many people attended the musical “Tobago!,” about which I heard mixed reviews. At the same time the always fun Denveras Jurmalnieki were performing a free concert of dance music in the hotel. It was encouraging and rather heartwarming to see a good number of younger Latvians (mostly middle-school aged and younger) enthusiastically and willingly participating in rotaļas and dances.

The last performance was the unified choir concert. I had expected the choir to be a bit bigger; however, the beautiful and acoustically excellent San Francisco Symphony Hall did cause the choir to sound larger. The performance had been scheduled to take place at the Herbst Theater, but a few days before the festival, the city’s fire department decided that the expected number of people would be too many for the theater.

Each Latvian has choir songs they like and don’t like. A typical concert usually contains a few of each. In this concert, the overwhelming crowd favorites were anything with the children’s choir, who not only sang with the larger united choir, but also performed four songs on their own. The audience enthusiastically requested that “Jūras māte man vaicāja” (complete with appropriate gestures) be repeated. The most interesting work was “Rudentiņš pie durvīm klauvē,” featuring lyrics by Andris Ritmanis and music Lolita Ritmane, conducted by Brigita Ritmane. It was both an appropriate and very enjoyable piece.

The evening’s festival ball featured an unbeatable combination of musicians: Iļģi and Los Pintos. At times they played separately, at times together. Late in the evening an enthusiastic and well-received rendition of Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” was sung by guest performer Artūrs Rūsis (maybe better known as producer of the now-cancelled NBC television drama, Providence). The greatest cheers were elicited when he sang “Latvian girl” instead of “brown-eyed girl.”

The hotel wanted the party to be over at 2 a.m., but the partygoers and bands resisted. After the bands played a rocking, marathon version of the folk song “Bēdu, manu lielu bēdu,” the partygoers were asked to leave the ballroom. However, hotel employees did push a grand piano into the foyer—apparently in an attempt to get all those crazy Latvians to stay in one place rather than wander throughout the entire hotel. A loud and energetic singing marathon ensued, led by Chicagoan Sandra Bērzupe on the piano and a bunch of song-happy teenagers.

By the time the singing was winding down around 4 a.m., most of the Iļģi appeared with their instruments and amplifier. Band leader Ilga Reizniece loves to teach traditional Latvian dances, which is what she did for two hours (occasionally playing the fiddle and dancing simultaneously). The number of dancers and onlookers varied from about 15 to 40. The band played its final song around 6 a.m.

Then someone suggested going up to the roof to watch the sunrise. A small group of people, some of whom were still sharp enough to ensure the doors would not lock behind us and leave us stranded on the roof, did exactly that. Somehow it was an appropriate way to top off a very enjoyable West Coast Latvian Song Festival.

Language is a crucial element in opening up your children’s Latvian heritage. But there is another part to the process of giving them a sense of Latvian identity: the annual cultural traditions and rituals of the Latvian people.

In my case this process involves food. When I think of Easter, Jāņi (Midsummer), Christmas, New Year’s Eve and even birthday celebrations back in my childhoood, I associate them with the specific foods baked for the occasion and the beautiful smells that wafted from the kitchen.

I can’t imagine Christmas without the smell of pīrāgi, ķimeņmaizes (caraway seed buns), ābolmaizes (apple slice), the traditional cepetis (pork roast) and of course the overpowering scent of piparkūkas (gingerbread) baking in the oven. Birthdays were always celebrated with the traditional kliņģeris. I’ll never forget the exotic scents of the saffron and cardamom being prepared to be mixed in with the other ingredients.

Easter would not be Easter without the eggs dyed in onion skins, as well as paska and a few other yummy Russian ring-ins: kulich (a sweet cake) and kulebyaka (salmon pie). I don’t know why my mother made them. They didn’t even sound Latvian, but they sure tasted heavenly.

And Jāņi would not be the same without Jāņu siers (cheese with caraway seeds) that often crumbled to pieces but always tasted delicious eaten together with the standard fare—pīrāgi.

Needless to say, this was all possible because my mother actually enjoyed cooking. My sister, my father and I were the lucky ones who could enjoy the fruits of mum’s hobby. But was it merely a hobby? Mum worked as well, so the effort she had to put in would have been great. And why? So her family could commend her on her cooking skills over and over again?

I don’t think so. There must have been a reason which I am only beginning to understand now that I have my own children. Come Easter and I will inevitably be out hunting down onion skins at all the local grocery stores (supermarkets are not as helpful in this regard), and in December (even though it’s the middle of summer in Melbourne) you’ll find me slaving over a hot stove baking piparkūkas and pīrāgi in the 40-degree (Celsius) heat.

And the kids love to get involved. They can’t wait to help with the kneading and the glazing and—most fun of all—the tasting! Yes, the process is tedious and exhausting and time-consuming and sometimes I wonder if it’s all been worth it. But when the family sits down for the Easter or Christmas feast and goes ape over the paska or the freshly baked pīrāgi, I know that what they are eating is just another part of their cultural heritage that I hope they will end up passing on to their children.

This aspect of Latvian culture—the preparation of traditional foods on special occasions—is still primarily (even in the liberated Western world) passed on from mother or grandmother to the younger generation of females. It would be rare (although I’m sure it does happen as my son is one example) to see a son or grandson in the kitchen, looking on as his relatives cook and bake. So a logical deduction can be drawn: if the Latvian partner in a relationship is a woman, there is a greater likelihood that there will be some attempt to replicate what her ancestors did before her (providing her relatives had the time, energy and interest in her childhood). There are exceptions, of course – I know of at least one Australian wife of a Latvian friend who makes a mean batch of pīrāgi and a scrumptious kliņģeris.

Cooking is one small part of one’s cultural heritage. In the case of Latvians it all depends on how far you want to take it. During Jāņi you may only be interested in teaching your children how to make a vaiņags (garland) and letting them hear a few songs so they know how they sound. Or you may feel it is important to their upbringing to experience a full-blown Jāņi, complete with jumping over the bonfire in a Latvian national costume and staying up till the wee hours of the morning. To achieve this aim it takes a bit more effort, finding out where these celebrations take place in your part of the world and maybe even getting involved in organizing such. A trip to Latvia around Jāņi is probably the best (and most expensive!) option, but then there’s the problem of finding a venue with authentic Jāņi celebrations.

Language is the most important element that needs to be passed down in order for the next generation to be able to catch a glimpse of the world through the eyes of a Latvian. But traditions add another dimension to this process. Of course it’s possible to show or experience the traditions without understanding the language, but an amalgamation of both creates a three- dimensional picture rather than a two-dimensional one. The traditions, which touch all five senses, will gel into one’s subconscious more readily than language by itself.

In recent months, Viesturs Zariņš and Juris Mazutis have offered their thoughts on the Latvian community in North America. I wanted to put in my 5 cents’ worth, although none of my statements will be as intellectual or highly developed as theirs.

When one uses the phrase “Latvian community in North America,” it immediately conjures up dozens, if not hundreds, of different issues. However, I would like to address only one: parents teaching or not teaching their children Latvian.

While reading The Washington Post one recent morning, I came across an article about immersion programs that was rather relevant to the topic of Latvian language acquisition in Latvian families outside of Latvia. (To clarify, I’m referring to “total immersion programs,” in regular Monday-Friday, September-June schools, which, according to the Center for Applied Linguistics, teach all or part of their curriculum through a second language.) Virginia Collier, a George Mason University professor who has done research on second language acquistion, was quoted in the article: “There is oodles of research showing the tremendous advantage with acquiring a second language. The stimulus of acquiring a second language raises the intellectual academic achievement of all students.”

Thus, my initial question: If you have the opportunity of giving your children this great gift at home—without sending them to a special school—why not do so?

The swimming pool analogy

In his commentary, Mazutis wrote: “For parents who had counted on two weeks of ‘immersion’ as remedial magic that would correct years of linguistic neglect at home, non-acceptance of their children was a tragic surprise. Which part of ‘unqualified’ ( resulting in ‘excluded’ ) did they not understand? They have no one to blame for disappointment and anger but themselves. The standards a family ‘lives to’ (which later on open opportunities, or set roadblocks for offspring) are not trivial investments.”

As a friend of mine commented, Mazutis’ observation might not be a politically correct thing to express. But it is most certainly true. As someone who spends the vast majority of her life in the Latvian community, I see this situation too frequently. Whatever a Latvian summer camp does in two weeks will not replace what is done in the home the other 50 weeks of the year, just as whatever a Latvian Saturday or Sunday school can accomplish in four hours a week will not undo what takes place in the child’s home the other 164 hours of the week.

Think of it this way: if I push a fully clothed person into a swimming pool on Saturday, and she climbs out, her clothes will be dry by the following Saturday. However, if keep pushing this person back into the pool every single day of the week, her clothes will never fully dry.

Just do it

How many of us know families in which the parents are of different religious faiths, but go through the trouble of introducing their children to both faiths so that, when the children are old enough, they themselves can chose which faith, if any, they would like to pursue further?

I would suggest something similar with the Latvian language. We all know that different languages and ethnicities are an essential part of humanity. If you have the chance of giving your child the gift of a second (or, third, as the case may be) language, do so! I have met far too many adults of Latvian heritage whose parents did not make the effort to teach them Latvian, resulting in their children later having to ask, “Why?”

The year is 2003, and North American families that speak a language other than English at home presumably do not face the same problems and prejudices as such families faced in the 1950s.  I believe that society has progressed in the past 50 years, and most intelligent people see the benefits of bi- or multilingualism.

‘Sorry’ does not cut it

My interest in immersion programs reaches beyond its relevance to being Latvian in America. Back in 1981, when I was five and my sister was four years old, we began attending a German immersion school, one of the very first of its kind. This was after we had learned Latvian (at home) and English (through playing with neighbors, attending a preschool and watching Sesame Street).

When most Americans find out that I was learning three languages by the age of five, they are amazed. Having been brought up in another language and culture (Latvian) is already astounding enough, but being sent to an immersion program on top of that?!

Certainly, teaching one’s children Latvian is not easy. But what in life is easy? Give your children the opportunity and option to learn another language, to be a part of another culture, so that they can make the choice as to whether pursue it or not.

A young Latvian-American woman I know recently asked her father why he and her mother (both of whom are Latvian) had not spoken Latvian at home, resulting in her and her brother not knowing the language. He had no answer. All he could say was, “Sorry.”  Unfortunately, “sorry” does not cut it in this situation.

Similarly, just last month I met a young man of Latvian descent (his father is Latvian, his mother is not), who is struggling to learn Latvian, which certainly is not an easy language for an adult to learn. Most parents know that young children are like sponges. They soak up everything you teach them. The same is not true of a 25-year-old.

My opinions and advice are based only on my own life experiences. However, I can without hesitation say that every single day of my life I am grateful for having been taught Latvian, in addition to being thankful for the various experiences knowing Latvian and being involved in the Latvian community have afforded me.