Nõgisto says Viljandi festival launched a new Ruja

Ruja used the 1976 Viljandi Youth Popular Music Festival to present a new musical direction, guitarist Jaanus Nõgisto recalled in an interview with ERR’s Vikerraadio.

The festival’s preliminary rounds took place on September 17 and 18, 1976, followed by a final concert on September 19 at the Viljandi song festival grounds. The performers included Psycho, Fix, Teravik, Suuk and Ruja, with Nõgisto on guitar.

At the time, Ruja was still the ensemble of the Youth Theatre. Nõgisto said the band had decided with Margus Kappel to begin making its own music and build its own “process”.

“The Viljandi festival was the first time Ruja came out with that ambition,” Nõgisto said.

Ruja’s usual singer, Urmas Alender, could not perform at the final concert. Peeter Volkonski replaced him after just one rehearsal at Nõmme Cultural Centre, Nõgisto said. Volkonski performed all his material from memory and without mistakes.

The concert also marked Gunnar Graps’s first performance as Ruja’s drummer. Andrus Vaht had left the position to join the orchestra of the Estonia Theatre, prompting the band to turn to Graps.

Graps played about six more concerts with Ruja in Tallinn, Tartu and elsewhere before focusing on his own Magnetic Band, Nõgisto said. Ruja later toured together with Magnetic Band.

The event was not a festival in the modern sense. A jury handed out prizes, and all bands were required to perform the song “Puhkus Viljandis” (“Holiday in Viljandi”).

Nõgisto said Ruja did not perform the required song. He described official attempts to dictate what musicians should play, wear and consider acceptable as absurd, saying bands either ignored such demands or turned them into grotesque performances.

Ruja was able to avoid much of that pressure because it did not have a single official patron. The group was at different times associated with the theatre and the Kalev Yacht Club, Nõgisto said, which kept officials from easily reaching it.

Failing to perform the required song also cost Ruja the title of the festival’s best band. Nõgisto said that mattered less to him than the opportunity to test the group’s music before a large audience.

“Basically, we started a new Ruja,” he said, adding that the band did not oppose Rein Rannap’s earlier work and continued to perform some of his songs. The group’s ambition, however, had grown. “Today this is called prog; we did not know how to define it that way,” Nõgisto said.