Recordings from the Estonian Folklore Archives 3

Hella Keem

Hella Keem at the Literary Museum in 1973. Photo by E. Kivaste. ERA, Foto 11870.

Hella Keem (1915–1997), a well-known linguist and specialist in the Võru dialect, performed the songs of Kanepi for this collection. She was from the village of Vaabina in Urvaste Parish. She began her studies at the University of Tartu in 1936, where her long career as a collector of dialect material started. Hella Keem was an outstanding collector as she was able to establish a particularly close and heartfelt relationship with her informants. The songs recorded in 1966 in the studios of Estonian Radio during the preparation for this edition were learned from the excellent dialect and folklore informants of Kanepi and Põlva Parishes. During a collecting expedition in 1937 to the village of Karste in the community of Kooraste Hella Keem as a scholarship holder from the Academic Mother Language Association visited Miina Leht (1874–?) and Ann Ismael (1862–1940). Both song texts presented here (pieces 64, 66) are from the material collected from these women.