‘Kuula hetke’ in the Estonian language means ‘listen to the moment’. And that is exactly what musicians Katariina Tirmaste and Kart Pihlap drew their audience into — a mode of deep listening. Witnessing their musical conversations, we heard the sea splashing in a stark desert. We dreamt while awake — of landscapes lurking below the surface of our knowing. We heard music in the long silences between notes. We made meaning from words we knew nothing of. When Katariina and Kart took the stage in the early hours of the second day at Jodhpur RIFF (a roots music festival in its 16th edition, organised by the Mehrangarh Museum Trust) the sun was almost up. We had already spent an hour, wrapped in pre-dawn darkness and the deliciously comforting notes of a paired woodwind instrument — the Alghoza, effortlessly brought us by maestro Idu Khan Langa. As light emerged from the sky by its own magical machinations, Katarina and Kart breathed new musicality into the day with their meditative explorations on the flute, liberally interspersed with layers of folk songs, live digitally programmed soundscapes, chants and voice improvisations. Often facing each other — just listening to the other play with melodic possibilities, the flautist duo’s performance approach seemed free of any desire to please the audience or meet their expectations of a concert. Yet, it gently swept them along to hitherto unknown places.
Music in a new light
The tunes from Kuula hetke could have been addressed to trees, mountains, skies, seas, flowers, birds, gods or animals. It was up to each to make what they would of it — an invitation to experience music in a new light (literally too, as the morning was nascent).
On their maiden visit to India, the Estonian musician duo spoke about their journeys as a band with the same ease and lightness they bring to their music. Coming from a country that won its freedom from Soviet occupation in 1991 through holding hands and singing together en masse (better known as the Singing Revolution), music is a core cultural value and community practice for “the 1.3 million people of our tiny country,” they share.
Hailed as one of the “least religious” countries in the world, Estonia is associated with folk music that carries a strong undercurrent of spirituality rooted in its pagan history. Though they are both trained in western classical idioms of music-making, Katariina and Kart’s musical expression is steeped in these folk music traditions. In their concerts and musical albums, they pass on songs they’ve been sung to as babies, or that they have heard through their families’ stories and collective memories of settling by the Baltic Sea, in times well before organised religions came to their shores.
Connect with the land
This elemental connection was illustrated in at least two of the compositions presented during the concert. One was drawn from regions of their country that Katariina’s great-grandfather had lived in. Pastoralists of that time would fashion instruments out of natural materials found in vast open lands that they grazed their livestock in, shares Katariina. It is no wonder that singing in nature, of nature, comes from an ancient place for these contemporary musicians. The other song illustrating the same connection was a lullaby that Kart had been sung to as a child. It was about a yellow flower that transforms into a woman, then desired by the sun and the moon, but who chooses to be by herself.
Speaking of how the band was born, Katariina shares that she taught Kart for a short while during a folk music camp of the kind that is commonly offered to foster the country’s musical traditions. Kart mentions that she was taken to such a camp for the first time when she was all of a month old, as her mother was “an organiser for traditional music camps.” While preparing for a final camp concert once, Katariina and Kart found that their collaborative work on the flute was well-received and promising. They decided to work together more and soon, were finding a name for a newly born band. Kart came up with ‘Kuula hetke’ while brainstorming on a call one night, say Katariina. “It resonated with me because... I felt it represented our musical approach well,” she adds, further connecting the name to how they “flow with musical impulses” as musicians. For Kart, Kuula hetke means “be present, hear the music and feel what you feel.”
Having worked together for over two years, they look back at how they took time to learn to collaborate. Kart has “never studied traditional music but been in it” all her life. She is now pursuing a degree in jazz music. Katariina formally studied traditional music at university and has taught it. Trained in western classical music, they both allow these influences to mix in the music they make. They describe their music as “flowing with two flutes.“ And this, for me, sums up the musical experience they offered their listeners at Jodhpur RIFF.
