Mėnuo Juodaragis, Black-Horned Moon Festival, Dūburys Lake Island, Lithuania August 22-25

A large sacred oak in the woods is encircled by long white banners. At its foot there a pile of stones forming an altar which has just been lit to open the festival. Grain is sprinkled on the flames, drums are beaten and chants are sung. The fire will be kept burning day and night for the duration of the festival. This is Lithuania’s Mėnuo Juodaragis - Black-Horned Moon Festival. Lithuania was the last country in Europe to adopt Christianity - in 1387 - and then only out of political expediency for Grand Duke Jogaila to marry the Polish Queen Jadwiga. So it’s a festival that celebrates the Baltic country’s pre-Christian culture. It takes place on a small island in a lake in the north of the country which briefly becomes home for 7000 people. For four days there’s an audience with drinking horns slung over their shoulders, runes on their faces and plenty of outlandish headgear. Musically there’s a lot of heavy metal and Baltic folk, rather more gentle. The best-known bands internationally playing this year were Estonia’s Puuluup, with their bowed talharpas and loopers, and Ukraine’s Dakh Daughters, with their dark cabaret, who happened to be performing on Ukraine’s independence day. As an ex-Soviet country, Lithuania very openly supports Ukraine in the ongoing war. There was a main stage, where those two bands and many others were

performing, and three other stages including a Folk Stage where there were plenty of Lithuanian folk bands to check out. One of the groups I most enjoyed was Ratilai, a quartet of guys playing accordion, violin, cello and a drum in a selection of two-step and three-step tunes. Acoustic music with a real spring and this band really got people dancing. Lithuania’s most distinctive folk songs are what they call sutartines, They are generally sung by women with two or three voices at a time. A lot of them have lyrics relating to rituals and to nature. One about sisterhood was included in the set by female trio Sen Svaja, a group in existence for 30 years, although, apart from founder member Dorotė Girėja, now with a new line-up. A very strong performance consisting of voices and percussion. “Sutartines are very deep in Lithuanian culture,” says Girėja. “They are like power songs to feel the spirit of the earth and the ancestors. Every sutartine has wisdom.” Where has she learned them I ask? “I was born into a family interested in these things. And maybe I get some from my past life as well. I really believe in this because this mythological world is so familiar. If someone starts singing I can just join in. This pagan thing is very important to me.” The most atmospheric sutartines I heard were sung around the altar at the sacred tree - the fire crackling in the background. They were performed by a young trio called Merkü who

cite Sen Svaja as an inspiration. Sutartines are sung in canon, each voice entering two bars after the previous one creating a sort of polyphony. Even though there are three voices, the vocal lines are quite short so there are only ever two voices singing together - although there’s one piece they do where the second phrase is slightly extended so there’s a moment when all three sing together. “Some musicologists think it might have been a mistake by whoever wrote it down, or maybe the old lady who sang it slightly messed up the rhythm,” says Merkü’s Saulė Paulikaitė. “But we really love this version because it makes it sound so much more magical. At that particular moment when three of us are singing there’s a strong overtone and it creates this feeling of an invisible fourth person singing. We feel very happy about it.” They sing their songs in a clockwise direction, each entry coming in clockwise from the last. Adelė Šumkauskaitė, one of the other singers in Merkü, says: “It’s because of the sun. Actually, we don’t know if people really cared about this so much before, but in the neo-pagan religion they believe if you do a ritual clockwise you are preaching the sun. If you do it anti-clockwise you are preaching the underworld.” At the far end of the island a boardwalk led to a small island where there was a small performance place in the woods. On the way there I came across Ketri, a female group from Belarus who with flaming dishes of fire were doing an invocation to the water spirit in the lake. I just stumbled across it, but it was a magical piece of ritual

theatre. Aside from the performances, there is a whole area of crafts where you can be carving bowls, making jewellery, crafting leather, writing runes. The logo of Menuo Juodaragis is formed by three runic characters, Mannaz, Jera and Raido which fit the festival rather well. “Mannaz is the rune for mankind, jera the rune of the yearly cycle and raido is a journey. So Menuo Juodaragis are people that every year create a journey,” festival director Ugnius Liogė explains. But they’ve also announced that this 24th edition will be the last. “There was this idea from quite early on that because there are 24 runes we shoul just do 24 editions of the festival. I think it might have stopped earlier, but I think the idea that we would have this final festival might have kept it going.” It’s hard to imagine having built a community as big and enthusiastic as this that it will just stop. But if it continues, in what form is still to be decided. On the final evening of the festival bonfires are lit. I can’t imagine anything like it at a music festival in the UK as these huge bonfires are blazing with crowds all around and they send sparks soaring into the air swirling like fireflies. But the fires are brilliantly constructed to collapse in on themselves as people revel around them. As a grand finale a large wooden star-shaped structure is ignited by fireworks. As it burns into the night, the fire seems like a warm heart keeping the pre-Christian culture of the Baltic alive. 

Simon Broughton

Pictures by Simon Broughton and Vygantas Karnauskas (3)