There is a sense, more than a sense, in which we in the West watch events in Eastern Europe (and the breaking news today from Ukraine looks more ominous than usual) as spectators, focused perhaps on the strategy, or the politics of it all, without always thinking enough about those caught up in what Putin has unleashed.

Perhaps that was the frame of mind in which Si Hawkins of Clash Magazine set out to cover Music Week in the Estonian capital, Tallinn. He was there for the music, but, in a sign of the times, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (formerly of Pussy Riot) were in town for the festival too, and were welcomed by Estonia’s president:

“Good morning… I’ve never seen so many people here,” ponders Toomas Hendrik Ilves, surveying the scrum below his lectern. “There must be a reason. It isn’t me.”

Hawkins comments, coolly enough:

It’s an interesting time to be in the Baltics, to put it mildly, and the increasingly important-in-these-parts Tallinn Music Week seems more than just a music festival this year: freedom is the oft-mentioned theme. Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea and apparent designs on the remainder of Ukraine has the other old Soviet republics, and the rest of the world, understandably perturbed. Estonia – independent from the Soviet Union since 1991 – has a 25% Russian populace. If enough of them start waving the white, blue and red, who knows what might happen.

There’s a hint of detachment detectable in those words, but read on and you can see it fade: Hawkins notes how “the refashioned wartime propaganda films” that accompany a performance by one band “don’t feel nearly as fun here as they usually might, however: a little too close to home.”

And then this:

Now Estonia, unlike Ukraine, is a member of the EU and NATO, which makes Russian intervention less likely, you’d hope. Still, I make a mental note not to repeat last year’s mishap and miss my flight home. We come, we see, we flee: that’s the modern westerner’s way.

Much of the rest of the piece is, naturally enough, dedicated to the music on show, but Hawkins’s last two paragraphs, beginning with a description of a performance by Maarja Nuut (her music is as good as he says, incidentally), well, see how you feel:

Sometimes the more out-there acts are a must-see. On a much bigger stage later on that final evening, taking trad-folk in a tech-savvier direction is the much-admired Maarja Nuut. The charismatic vocalist/violinist uses a sample pedal to build her own vocal harmonies, but doesn’t always need them: during one reworked folk standard, her chorus gradually gains a live accompaniment as many of the crowd around us begin to sing along. It’s a lovely moment: aural balm for a troubled mind.
In stark contrast to that sonic beauty is the reaction yours truly elicits at the festival after-party, a few hours on. Chatting to a chirpy young restaurant manageress (there’s a food offshoot too, TMW Tastes), I slightly flippantly mention the Lithuanian chap’s prophecy about the imminent Russian invasion, as if passing on a bit of juicy celebrity gossip. And she starts to cry. Such things really shouldn’t be taken lightly.