Standing in the grass before an open crescent-shaped stage, I listened as voices rang out, seeming to echo infinitely across the green field. This is laulupidu, the Estonian song and dance festival held every five years since the late 1800s, that preserved national identity amidst German and Soviet occupation. For my first laulupidu, I was surrounded by my immediate and extended family and the songs took me back to when my grandfather would sing to me, “Ants oli vaikne saunamees” (Ants was a quiet sauna man). His voice boom as he sang, vibrating from his belly. He and my grandmother fled Estonia during the war, my grandfather escaping under the cover of nightfall with others in a small boat burdened by far too many people in it, Russians spraying bullets at them into the water. In dire times like these, songs were peaceful protests, a way of resisting the Soviet occupation and of preserving your culture in a foreign land as many Estonians became refugees in the United States.