Author: Vaim Sarv, Anne Türnpu, Andreas Kalkun, Janika Oras
This book is about land and kin, dispossession and desire, solidarity
and silence. It is a critical celebration of the oral tradition of
runosong, a style of singing which has been practiced for centuries by
Baltic Finnic peoples on the land now called Estonia and elsewhere.
Featuring conversations with singers and folklorists Anne Türnpu,
Andreas Kalkun, and Janika Oras, the compiled texts enact a fugitive
search for historical consciousness by drawing upon the wealth of
alternative vocal and somatic practices embedded in runosong. Working
against the grain of Estonian nationalism and its Eurocentric
tendencies, this involves mapping and resisting the ways in which
divergent bodies, selves, and forms of physical sociality have been
disciplined through the interplay of brutality and privilege inherent
to modernization. The book is a provocation, but one born out of love
and a sense of obligation to the ancestors.
110x180mm, offset, 2025
Edition of 300 copies, €15 (info@opapublishing.com)