Civil Union, Harmony Centre lead in Europarliament vote

Andris Straumanis | 

Sandra Kalniete, a former foreign minister and now a member of the Latvian parliament, appears to be heading to the European Parliament as one of the country’s newest representatives, according to provisional voting results announced June 7 by the Central Election Commission in Rīga.

Latvian voters went to the polls June 6 to elect eight members of the Europarliament as well as to decide who will represent them on local government councils. All but one precinct out of 950 had reported results by 11 p.m. Latvian time June 7.

Kalniete’s relatively new party, Civil Union (Pilsoniskā savienība, or PS), has earned 24.32 percent of the ballots cast by 789,539 voters in the European Parliament vote, according to the election commission. That’s enough to give PS two seats in the European Parliament. No. 2 on the PS ticket was incumbent MEP Inese Vaidere.

The socialdemocratic Harmony Centre (Saskaņas centrs, or SC) also has earned two seats, thanks to the 19.53 percent of voters who cast ballots for the party favored by many among Latvia’s Russian speakers. Topping the ticket for SC was Alfreds Rubiks, a former Communist Party leader who spent six years in prison for crimes against the Latvian state. No. 2 on SC’s European Parliament ticket was Saeima member Boriss Cilevičš.

Four other parties have earned one seat each.

The pro-Moscow party For Human Rights in United Latvia (Par cilvēka tiesībām vienotā Latvijā) earned 9.62 percent of the vote, in all likelihood returning incumbent MEP Tatjana Ždanoka.

The conservative First Party of Latvia (Latvijas Pirmā partija / Latvijas ceļš) got 7.5 percent of the vote. No. 1 on the party’s ticket was former Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis.

The conservative For Fatherland and Freedom (Tēvzemei un brīvībai / LNNK) garnered 7.46 percent of ballots. No. 1 on its ticket was incumbent MEP Roberts Zīle.

And the conservative party New Era (Jaunais laiks) took 6.66 percent of the vote. No. 1 on New Era’s ticket for the European Parliament election was Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš, a U.S.-born dual citizen and member of the Saeima who was one of a handful of Latvian candidates with ties to the diaspora.

Final results will not be known for three weeks, according to the election commission. Internal party politics also may yet determine which candidates in fact land the European Parliament positions.

Latvian voters actually elected nine MEPs, although only eight will initially take office. The ninth representative will be one of 18 so-called “phantom” MEPs who may not take office for up to two years but will in the meantime receive full pay and benefits from the European Parliament. The current size of the parliament is limited to 736 representatives, but if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified the body will increase to 754 members. Under a May 6 decision by the European Parliament, the 18 extra MEPs will be allowed observer status until the treaty is ratified.

Based on the Europarliament balloting in Latvia, according to a Twitter post by Civil Union candidate Pēteris Vinķelis, his party gets the “phantom” post, too.

Latvia’s turnout in the European Parliament election, according to Central Election Commission, stood at 53.06 percent—the highest in the Baltics. Across the 27 countries in which Europarliament elections were held from June 4-6, turnout averaged 43.39 percent, according to European Union data. Lithuania recorded just 20.54 percent participation, while Estonia had a turnout of 43.2 percent.

Andris Straumanis is a special correspondent for and a co-founder of Latvians Online. From 2000–2012 he was editor of the website.

Folk song book gives voice to Medņeva singers

Amanda Jātniece | 

Medņevas dziedātājas

In 1987 a group of women in the Medņeva area of far northeastern Latvia established an ensemble devoted to the singing of local folk songs. The Medņeva Ethnographic Ensemble sang and continues to sing songs that the group’s members learned from their parents and grandparents or remember from work parties and celebrations when they were children.

The group members have also interviewed their neighbors and other locals and learned songs from them. Several researchers recognized the value of documenting this ensemble and its repertoire, which resulted in the recent publication of Medņevas dziedātājas, a book accompanied by a pair of compact discs, by the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art at the University of Latvia.

Most previous collections of folk songs have been just that: a book full of melodies all transcribed into the same key, each with only a verse or two of text, only the name and birth date and place of the singer, and no further notes on the usage or origin of the song. In this book, however, ethnomusicologist Anda Beitāne has taken a much more holistic approach. The book begins with a general introduction to traditional music and its documentation in the Medņeva area, followed by a fairly technical description of the Medņeva ensemble’s typical repertoire. Next is a section on the history of the Medņeva ensemble, written by the singers themselves. This section gets a bit tedious, as it seems to list practically every performance the ensemble has done in its 20-plus years. From a documentary standpoint, however, would that every folk ensemble had such a biography written about it!

Only then are the actual song transcriptions presented. If earlier song collections tried to squeeze as many melodies as possible onto a page, then this book devotes at least two pages to each song. Each song is transcribed in exactly the key that the singers sing it in—a very precise and correct gesture, but one that will frustrate those who are not so well versed in reading music, because sometimes the key of D flat (five flats) or B (five sharps) just happens to be most suitable for the women’s voices. The transcriptions also laboriously include all of the harmonies and variations that the women sing. Notes, quotes and comments by both Beitāne (in Latvian) and the Medņeva singers themselves (in deep Latgalian dialect) about the origin and history of each song precede the transcriptions.

After the transcriptions are autobiographies and photographs of each singer in the ensemble. These are particularly interesting and make the songs very personal—the more you read and listen, the more you get attached to these ladies. Many of the older singers tell of hard times and childhoods spent working as shepherds for nearby farmers. Others tell of war, kolkhozes (collective farms) and deaths in the family, but also of beauty, dear friends, bread baking and even beekeeping. 

The main focus, though, is the two CDs with recordings of the 35 songs included with the book. Since notation is only an approximation of music, the recordings allow one to hear the manner, tempo and tone in which the songs are meant to be sung. Most of them will not be familiar to casual readers and listeners, which makes the material a wonderful source for learning new songs. All are sung in Latgalian (except for a one brief verse and refrain in Russian) and sound quintessentially “Latgalian.” The majority of the songs are upbeat and cheerful, but these are unfortunately not the CDs to play at your local Latvian social event. Authentic rural singing is, shall we say, an acquired taste.

At first I was going to write that these discs and book are purely for educational and research purposes, because who is going to want to listen to a bunch of septuagenarians singing? And I’ll admit that the first time I listened to the discs, they were playing in the background and—big surprise—I thought they sounded like just a bunch of old ladies. The second time, though, I took a different approach and listened to them in my car, where I had no choice but to pay attention. I now understand why folklorists get so carried away about the Medņeva ensemble and similar singers. It’s not only their particular repertoire of songs, but—to use the current buzz word—the manner in which they sing, which can best be described as “juicy,” as one would say in Latvian.

Many folk ensembles depend on a couple of main singers, with the the rest singing along en masse. But practically every Medņeva singer has a strong, distinctive voice and is able to begin songs and sing the main lines of them. Yes, they are old ladies (to be fair, there are also younger women in the group), but their voices are in surprisingly good shape.

The women sing virtually everything in at least two-part harmony, if not three and four parts. That said, only one song on the two discs (“Man patika mīžu druva”) makes use of a pure drone harmony. Several songs can be classified as talka (collective work in the fields) songs, others are linked to specific seasonal celebrations or weddings. The Medņeva women are also skilled at apdziedāšana (teasing songs), and the discs contain several examples of this. A garmon (a type of button accordion) player accompanies the women on a couple of songs, otherwise everything is sung a capella.

The book is in Latvian and contains many quotes in Latgalian. At the end, though, is a nice 10-page translation in English of the book’s first section. The translation provides a more than adequate context for and description of the Medņeva singers and their repertoire. But, obviously, an understanding of Latvian, and particularly Latgalian, will give the reader a much fuller impact.

Beitāne writes, “This is the first instance in Latvian ethnomusicology where traditional singers have been given the opportunity to offer information about themselves.” Indeed, other than a 1999 book devoted to the singer Veronika Porziņģe from Alsunga, this book differs dramatically from all previous collections of Latvian folk texts and melodies in that it emphasizes the actual people involved in the musical traditions, rather than just the material they produce. I believe it’s a worthy approach, and not just for research purposes. This book is a wonderful monument to the gutsy ladies of Medņeva and their musical legacy, and—for the right person—it will be positively inspiring.

Details

Medņevas dziedātājas

Anda Beitāne, comp.

Rīga:  Latvijas Universitātes Literatūras, folkloras un mākslas institūts,  2008

ISBN 9934803208

On the Web

LU Literatūras, folkloras un mākslas institūts

The Web site for the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art at the University of Latvia includes information on where to order its publications. LV

Rīga goes to Harmony Centre, but Civil Union fares surprisingly well

Andris Straumanis | 

The socialdemocratic Harmony Centre (Saskaņas centrs, or SC) appears to have fared even better in the Rīga City Council election than exit polls suggested during the June 6 election, in which Latvians across the country voted for their local government and European Parliament representatives.

With votes in all but two of Rīga’s 158 precincts counted as of about 10 p.m. Latvian time June 7, the Central Election Commission reported that SC has captured 34.38 percent of ballots. The new reformist party Civil Union (Pilsoniskā savienība) has earned 18.83 percent of the vote, while the conservative First Party of Latvia (Latvijas Pirmā partija / Latvijas Ceļš, or LPP/LC) has come in third with 15.13 percent and New Era (Jaunais laiks) is fourth with 11.05 percent. Harmony Centre is favored by many in Rīga’s Russian-speaking population.

Nils Ušakovs of SC may likely become the new mayor of Rīga, although his colleague Sergejs Dolgopolovs told the newspaper Diena that he still is a candidate, too. The new mayor will be elected by the new 60-member city council.

Ušakovs’ conservative rival Ainārs Šlesers of LPP/LC is not out of the picture, either, at least not as a power broker. Media reports suggest SC and LPP/LC, strange bedfellows though they might be, have enough seats on the new city council to form a two-party coalition, leaving Civil Union in the opposition. Šlesers, formerly Latvia’s controversial transportation minister, mounted a high-profile campaign in a bid to become mayor of Rīga.

Turnout across Latvia reached almost 53 percent of eligible voters. In all, 789,375 people cast ballots at 950 polling stations. Activity was highest in Rīga, where turnout reached 56.88 percent, but lowest in Kurzeme province, where 48.42 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, according to the Central Election Commission.

Across Zemgale province, a total of 114,285 people, or 49.29 percent of those eligible, cast ballots in their local government elections. In Jelgava, the Union of Greens and Farmers (Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība, or ZZS), captured 26.54 percent of the vote, followed by SC with 17.84 percent and New Era (Jaunais laiks) with 12.33 percent. LPP/LC did well in Jēkabpils, capturing 25.58 percent of the vote, compared to SC with 16.58 percent and the Green Party of Latvia (Latvijas Zaļā partija) with 13.84 percent.

In Latgale province, which has the largest Russian-speaking population outside of the capital city and where unemployment is particularly high, the leftist parties did well. Across the province, a total of 127,603 people voted, representing 53.19 percent of those eligible. In the local government election in Rēzekne, SC walked away with 43.51 percent of the vote, while 16 other parties divided up the rest, none of them topping 10 percent. In Daugavpils, the Latvian Socialdemocratic Workers Party (Latvijas Sociāldemokrātiskā strādnieku partija, or LSDSP) captured 29.84 percent of the vote, followed by LPP/LC with 27.68 percent and SC with 18.24 percent.

Turnout in Kurzeme province stood at 99,255 voters, or 48.42 percent of those eligible. In the local government election in Liepāja, the Liepāja Party (Liepājas partija) maintained its strong position, taking 35.14 percent of the vote. Following it were SC with 17.64 percent and LPP/LC with 8.39 percent.

In Ventspils, meanwhile, Aivars Lembergs’ party For Latvia and Ventspils (Latvijai un Ventspilij) has maintained its leading position in the local government, garnerning 59.96 percent of the vote, but has lost some of its power. SC, which four years ago came in third, moved up a notch with 18.89 percent of the vote. Three parties—New Era, Civil Union and the Society for a Different Politics (Sabiedrība citai politikai)—joined together on one ticket and earned 11.33 percent of the vote.

A total of 214,172 voters, or 53.18 percent of those eligible, turned out in Vidzeme province. In Jūrmala, the sometimes controversial local party Jūrmala – Our Home (Jūrmala – Mūsu Mājas) earned 18.27 percent of the vote, just barely topping SC with its 18.23 percent. New Era came in third with 9.26 percent.

For conservative parties, Valmiera proved a stronghold. The People’s Party (Tautas partija) found a bright spot in an otherwise discouraging election, harvesting 47.07 percent of the vote. Second was New Era with 17.37 percent and third was For Fatherland and Freedom (Tēvzemei un brīvībai / LNNK) with 10.04 percent.

Results of the European Parliament election will not be announced by the Central Election Commission until 11 p.m. Latvian time on June 7. Latvians voted to place representatives in eight seats in the parliament. Exit polls suggested Civil Union and Harmony Centre have both taken some of them.

(Updated with new vote totals for Rīga.)

Andris Straumanis is a special correspondent for and a co-founder of Latvians Online. From 2000–2012 he was editor of the website.