Mõtsmees

The album is built on tapes recorded in the autumn of 1989. A group of students set out to reconstruct their fraternity’s singing tradition and asked Susanna’s great-grandfather Leonhard Mõtsmees — a member himself in Estonia’s first republic — to teach them melodies from old songbooks. During the session he also sang his own favourites, songs that appear in no songbook. Thirty-six in total. The album builds new versions around those recordings, with the original tape left audible.

“This album matters to me because through it I get to play music with my great-grandfather Leonhard Mõtsmees, whom I never had the chance to meet,” says Susanna.

The first album she produced and mixed herself. It earned her Etnokulp nominations for Artist, Album and New Folk Artist of the Year.