The festival week starts on Sunday June 16 with the traditional lighting of the torch at the song festival stone. Over the course of the week, dozens of concerts and events will take place all over Tartu. The performances which are part of the Song Festival all take their names from different lines of the Estonian national anthem, including "On Suure laia ilma peal" and "Mul kõige armsam."

The week-long celebration culminates in a song festival on Saturday June 22 entitled "Õnn ja rõõm" ("Joy and delight"). It is  preceded by a grand procession from Vabaduse puiestee to the Song Festival Grounds, which begins at 4 p.m.

According to Küllike Joosing, who is the artistic director of the Song Festival, they had not set out to link the different concerts during the festival to the national anthem from the start.

"When I wrote my own program for 'Õnn ja rõõm,' I realized that it was linked to the anthem, but I didn't think about focusing on it. I was just thinking about those two words by themselves," Joosing said.

However, when she got together with Kristel Maruste, the artistic director of the Dance Festival, they soon found common ground. "Every person is only as happy as the strength of their background they come from, or in other words, their roots. The stronger that bond, the more confident they can be to go their own way in life, if they know where they come from and who they can rely on," said Maruste.

With this as a starting point, the search was on for more words in the anthem that also have a deeper meaning independently of it.

The Song and Dance Festival poses a number of questions about what happiness really is, where to find it and how many faces it has. "I think a lot of people, including myself, might answer that happiness is family and children," said Karuste. "I've thought the same – that I'm happy when my loved ones are well," agreed Joosing.

The Song Festival program includes both traditional and new compositions. "It's a little bit original, that's the aim of it. If we did the same thing every five years, there would be no need for a new artistic director," said Joosing.

Among the new pieces featured are a work written for boys' choirs by Arno Tamme, Rasmus Puuri's Song Festival theme song, Trad.Attack!'s "Tehke ruumi!" and many more.

While the event takes place during Tartu's year as European Capital of Culture, the aim is to create an international feel by demonstrating Estonia's traditions to the world. "The team and I stuck to the idea that we should project our traditions outwards, rather than adopting something from outside. Our authenticity comes from what is here and what is truly us. We are trying to bring people here with that," Joosing explained.

"What's interesting is that we ourselves think everyone around the world knows what a great thing we are doing here in Estonia. But, I've had a number of conversations with people from abroad this year where I've showed them pictures of the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds on my phone and their mouths drop open. Very often, they still don't know [about this], so this is something to introduce to the world. But I think we are getting bigger and bigger in this sense," Joosing said.

The theme of the 2024 Tartu Dance Festival is "Juure juures," and highlights the importance of people being connected to their roots and ancestors.

The story of the performance is about the wisdom we receive wisdom we receive in conversations with our grandmothers. It encourages the audience to ponder what a child of 5 might ask their grandmother today and what about an adult of 35? Even more poignantly, what would you ask them if you no longer had the chance?"

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