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Artist
Iļģi
12+ albums
folklatviantraditionalpost-folkfolk-rock
about
The most famous world folk music band from Latvia Iļģi celebrated their 31st anniversary on April 21, 2012. The group started at the Cultural Centre of Iļģuciems, Rīga, Latvia in 1981 where Ilga Reizniece, a professional violinist, founded an ensemble of Latvian folk music. She had just graduated from the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music and was an active member of two prominent folk music ensembles Bizīteri and Skandinieki of the time. At the beginning Iļģi was an ensemble of authentic Latvian folk music. They visited remote parts of Latvia in search for unrecorded folk songs, studied the traditional performance, as well as sewing their own traditional costumes and building their own instruments. They also performed wherever they could find willing listeners and pass on the knowledge they had acquired as befitted an ensemble of folk music. The studies of the authentic music led to interest in the ancient history, archeology, ethnography, mythology and traditions. The serious research was the foundation to the development of the ensemble beyond the boundaries of traditional music. Ilga Reizniece reckoned that they have always acknowledged the dual purpose of the group: on one hand they dutifully studied, preserved and taught the authentic performance and tunes, on the other hand all the members of the group were professionals yearning to fulfill their creative ambitions in music. The search for new means of expression in music inevitably led to recruiting new members in
