Recordings from the Estonian Folklore Archives 3

Reet Sutt

Reet Sutt and Liis Alas at a recording session in Tallinn in 1937–1938. Photo by P. Parikas. ERA, Foto 779.

The old wedding traditions survived vigorously right up to the decades following the Second World War on Kihnu Island, a tiny island just 12 kilometres off the coast of the mainland in the Gulf of Riga. During the 1937 recording sessions made by the National Radio two women of Kihnu were included – Liis Alas ja Reet Sutt. Reet Sutt (1877–?) came from a singing clan in the village of Lemsi. After she got married she went to Tara farm in the village of Linaküla. Very little of Reet’s repertoire has been collected but August Pulst has described her as a lively and nimble woman with a smile on her face. In her old age she went to live with her son in the Audru Parish.