Song festival: thousand of songs and participant elder than independent Lithuania

“Vilnius will definitely change very much. We’ll see how many people will come from the whole world, from the whole of Lithuania. Cheers and colors will fill the streets, and there will be many events,” organizers Saulius Liausa said.

“Lithuanians have rare occasions to do so, but so let’s be proud and we have something to be proud of – our culture, our people and accomplished work,” he added.

The Lithuanian Song Festival, taking place in a year when Lithuania marks the centenary of its statehood, will start on Saturday in the second-largest city of Kaunas, and other related events will take place in Vilnius up until July 6.

The festival will include 15 events and the performance of a thousand of songs. The eldest participant will be Lithuanian-Australian Stasys Eimutis, 102.

“He’s elder than an independent Lithuania (…), and the youngest participant is only four,” Culture Minister Liana Ruokytė-Jonsson said. “We can see that the song festival is an event that involved the whole of Lithuania and all generations.”

Emergency services will be on standby during the festival. “36,000 participants and at least ten times more of members of the audience and tourists will be a huge challenge for the services,” Liausa said.