After representing Estonia at Eurovision in 2023, Alika Milova has established herself as one of the country's biggest pop stars. Her hit song "Bridges" has racked up over 16 million streams on Spotify, and in 2024, her self-titled debut album "Alika" picked up five Estonian Music Awards.

But now, the Narva-born singer is setting off in a new direction.

Last fall, Milova teamed up with Arno Tamm — a pillar of Estonia's folk music scene — for "Tracing the Roots," a new collaborative project that explores the duo's cultural and musical heritage.

And where better to show the results than in Viljandi, at Estonia's biggest and best-known folk festival?

Billed as "the ultimate expression of the unique way of thinking that started spreading in the beginning of the 1990s," Viljandi Folk is more than just a music festival. It's a proud affirmation of Estonian "heritage and local identity," aiming not only to entertain but to "keep [Estonian] traditions alive, strengthen our national character and invigorate our musical mother tongue."

From Duo Ruut to Zetod, Mari Kalkun to Tintura, there's no shortage of top Estonian artists in the festival lineup who specialize in taking age-old folk tunes and creatively re-imagining them for contemporary audiences.

This year, Milova and Tamm are among them.

"For Estonians, [folk music] is cool because it is part of our nationality and our history," Milova tells me when I meet the two of them ahead of their performance together at Viljandi Folk.

After finding what seemed like a quiet spot on the grass to chat, we're soon surrounded by a group of children, who launch into an impromptu pillow fight. "They don't care about us, we're just in the middle of it," Milova laughs as a cushion flies past.

Nevertheless, their presence seems to reinforce her point that more and more "parents are bringing their kids here, and they are also starting to learn what folk and Estonian culture is."

Keeping traditions alive

While folk may be new terrain for Milova, for Arno Tamm, it's been a lifelong pursuit. At this year's Viljandi Folk, he performs with four different bands — including Thursday night's headliners Paabel and Friday's main act Trad.Attack!

"This festival has a lot to do with the revival of Estonian folk music," Tamm explains. "In the 90s when we started coming out of the Soviet era, it was not common for a father to teach his son or mother to teach her daughter these skills, this music or this language — all the things that used to be very normal for hundreds and hundreds of years [before that]."

When he grew up, Tamm recalls folk music in Estonia being "more like an act on stage." But now, things are changing.

"We have a new generation of young people who have grown up seeing that playing traditional instruments and dancing to these traditional songs is a normal part of life."

"Now I see 15- or 16-year-olds who already play instruments and are fanatic about it," Tamm smiles. "And they really want to listen to those dusty old archive recordings."

Among the archives

Dusty they may be but there's no shortage of material in those Estonian folk archives for them to work with.

"There are literally hundreds of thousands of recordings and written words," Tamm says, adding that he's come to love the process of delving through online collections of songs from all over Estonia in the quest to unearth the next hidden gem.

"You don't have to know anything about the traditional music or the background," he explains. "You can just start clicking around to see what they're like."

For "Tracing the Roots," Milova and Tamm also delved into the Polyphony Project — an online treasure trove of songs painstakingly recorded and compiled to preserve and present the living musical folklore of villages across Ukraine.

"I love the Polyphony Project because you don't need to be very smart to find things," Milova explains. "There are lots of videos [there] from every part of Ukraine, where grandmas are sitting and singing their songs."

Personal connections

Milova's Ukrainian roots give her an even more personal connection to some of those songs and she also has fond memories of her grandmother singing some of them to her when she was a child.

"Today, I'm also going to sing a song in Ukrainian, which my grandmother sang to me," she says, adding that to sing in the language and talk about her Ukrainian roots has become "even more important right now."

That sense of personal connection to the music is a key part of Tamm and Milova's project.

Another song in their set comes from Vaivara Municipality, a small corner of Ida-Viru County —  the oft-misunderstood region in Estonia's northeast. Not only is Vaivara where Tamm's great grandfather once lived but it's also close to Narva — the border town where Milova grew up.

"For me it's really important to be very active about my opinion on Ida-Viru County," Milova says.

"[Elsewhere] in Europe, people don't know about Ida-Viru County, they just know about Narva because it's the border town. But I think for Estonians, too, it's important to tell them the story and for people to go there because it's very beautiful," she adds.

"Through music and by performing, I can also do that."

A new context

The thousands attending this year's Viljandi Folk — many of whom, like the pillow fighters who surround us, are still in their teens or younger — lap up the modern-day reworkings of historical folk tunes.

But not everyone is so keen to embrace the folk evolution.

Our conversation turns to the so-called "folk police" — a nickname for purists who insist on strict rules that define what authentic folk music can and cannot be.

"I've grown from fearing the 'folk police' to becoming them," Tamm confesses.

"I've been dealing with traditional music and texts for quite some time now, so I've become really pedantic about specific things, especially when it comes to the language — what you can do or how you can use those words."

However, he also recalls the words of a favorite teacher from when he was just starting out.

"We were asking her for permission because she seemed like the 'folk police,'" Tamm says. "Can we do this with a Runo song (Regilaul in Estonian - ed.)? Is it okay?"

"She just said: 'You are a creative person, you'll figure it out.' And that's the point actually. When you look into your heritage you have to be creative, especially with folk music."

That sentiment still drives him today.

"The only culture not changing is a dead culture," Tamm says. "Now, we are in a new context — there has to be a new context for those words and thoughts as well."

Promise of the real

Respecting tradition while also allowing it to evolve is certainly a delicate balance. The benefits of online archives like the Polyphony Project to preserve the cultural and musical heritage we already have are clear to see.

But in a world increasingly dominated by digital technology and AI, Tamm believes experiencing music live in settings like Viljandi Folk, has become more essential than ever.

"I enjoy these moments that are not broadcasted, that are not live on Instagram and not streaming everywhere right away," he says.

"I was actually asked before our first gig 'will this be on Spotify?' But no, you really have to come and hear it. People are craving more real things — and what could be more real than a live performance?"

For both Tamm and Milova, the "Tracing the Roots" project is, in their words, "fully personal." "Every song is somehow is connected to our life, our roots and our history," Milova says.

"So, it also makes sense to share it with the audience personally," Tamm smiles. "Just like we are talking right now, right here. This is the moment."

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More information about the Viljandi Folk Music Festival is available here

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