Veljo Tormis, who will be 70 on 7 August 2000, has become – de facto rather than through any external sign of age – the Grand Old Man of Estonian music' He will celebrate the event in an Estonia enjoying its tenth year of liberty, but for the three preceding decades, through most of the dark night of Russian occupation, Tormis's music, based on regilaul, the primitive runic folksong of the Estonian people, was an important repository of ethnic identity.