Gavin's Eesti Life

I’m just writing a quick post to declare my love of Raadio Elmar. As an Englishman living in Estonia, who barely knows how to speak the language, I find it really useful and enjoyable to listen to Raadio Elmar. As far as radio stations in Estonia go, Raadio Elmar is minu lemmik (my favourite).

Raadio Elmar’s main niche is that all of the songs are in Estonian unless they have a valid excuse to play something non-Estonian (usually when established Estonian artists release a song in English.) The main draw for me though is their “Soovide aeg” – roughly translated as “Request Time” – which is their phone in show. I really like listening to the short telephone conversations because I know most of the basic words, and it is really good for me to listen to how real Estonian’s talk, rather than textbook Estonian.

I used to listen to Vikeraadio but despite being very clearly spoken most of the time, the topics are usually far too advanced for me to understand. I much prefer a quick “Hello, this is Raadio Elmar” followed by a few pleasantries and then a song request. Far more up my alley!

They have a good mix of music on there, and I’m starting to really like a few Estonian songs, most notably (a guitly pleasure of mine, as I don’t like much of his other output) is Ott Lepland’s “Süte peal sulanud jää“ (“Ice that melted on embers”.) It’s quite alarming how many songs there are that have the same tune as English/American songs with the lyrics changed to Estonian, but that’s a blog post for another day!

I just wanted to publicly declare my love for Raadio Elmar, maybe one day I’ll pluck up the courage to phone in myself. You can take a listen for yourself on their website – Raadio Elmar.

Filed under:
estonia, music by Gavin