Mr X or the artist of the people?

For most generations of Finns, Georg Ots was probably the most famous Estonian. Today, his place seems to have been taken by Anu Saagim, a model and a media personality.

For most people, a reference to Georg Ots brings to mind the song Saarenmaan valssi. But what do Estonians think about Ots today? This is one of the issues touched on by Mari Laanements and Killu Sukmit, who represent the younger Estonian video art generation. In their collaborated works, they often address the concept of documentary in relation to video.

”It is true that today Anu Saagim is better known than Georg Ots, but on closer inspection there is a huge difference between the two. Anu must be prepared to do anything, all the time. If she fails to do something worth mentioning, publishers don’t have anything to sell. Anu doesn’t seem to pay much attention to what the Estonian press think about her. Georg Ots, on the other hand, always tried to balance between ’high’ and ’low’: he wanted to do high art in the opera but at the same time also revealed his folksy side, which actually may have suited him better,” Laanemets and Sukmit say.

Ots has been a father figure for many Estonians, and he received tons of letters. ”I can’t imagine Ots not giving any thought to what he did or what the consequences were. Times have indeed changed. If Ots was alive today, perhaps we would have a reality TV show on him, much like The Osbournes or Andy McCoy Show. But I doubt if he would have said yes to something like that. He is a modern legend in a sense, but at the same time he has been virtually forgotten. This may be the underlying reason why we wanted to make a work about him, it was his eerie presence that inspired us.”

Ots was very popular in his native Estonia and had large audiences in what is today Russia and many East European countries. This is one of the reasons why the artists took up the subject. Ots seemed to be a connecting link in an area where almost everyone liked his music. ”Of course he was also an interesting person, and very handsome, or so we have been told. In spite of that, we are more interested in his songs and their interpretations in different countries,” the artists say.

Laanemets and Sukmit are also interested in the history and background of Ots’ songs: where and when they were made and what was their relationship to the changing political situations.

”Our curiosity was aroused when we got more information on Ots and his songs. We wondered if it was time someone looked for different interpretations. Now that we know something about him, we realise that we don’t know much at all. We were both born in 1975, the same year when Ots died. It also seems that he was liked by Finns, Russians and Lithuanians alike, but for some reason Estonians were not equally enthusiastic. Perhaps that was just plain envy.”

During his lifetime, Ots received much acclaim; after his death, he was considered so important that he had a street, a music college and a song contest named after him. A while ago there was an advertisement in an Estonian newspaper revealing that a company is launching a cheese with Ots’ portrait on the package. Another business wanted to produce an alcoholic beverage with Ots’ portrait on the label, but the project dried up.

Kati Kivinen