'Bicycle music' sets out on its 16th tour across Latvia

For the sixteenth time, the “Velomūzika” musical journey created by Kārlis Kazāks is setting out along Latvia’s country roads, trading music for a place to stay. This summer, the route will take them through Vidzeme, stopping at places where the “Velomūzika” travellers have not yet visited in the past 15 years. “Around Christmas, I posted on social media that we wanted to trade music for a place to stay in Vidzeme, and then I had to choose from about 100 applications. There are places like Degumnieki, for example, where they let us stay at the community centre in exchange for music. There are private homes, like our first night in Sāviena, and then there’s a vacation spot in Stāķi. The bakery ‘Ķelmēnu maize’ is hosting us – in short, there’s a variety,” says Kārlis Kazāks, the creator of the “Velomūzika” concept. Only acoustic instruments are brought along on the bikes – guitar, mandolin, ukulele, bass ukulele, melodion, and various percussion instruments – which will be used to perform Kārlis Kazāks’ songs. This year, the tour leader will be joined by longtime companions on these trips – Maija Ušča, bass guitarist for the band “Stūrī zēvele”; actress Karīna Tatarinova; actor Kaspars Zvīgulis; and musician Anete Kalniņa. The first decade of “Velomūzika” has been documented in the book “The Beginning Finds Us”, but the tour participants continue to collect memories and stories from their experiences. The travellers emphasise that the greatest value of “Velomūzika” lies not only in the concerts or the kilometres travelled, but in the people they meet along the way and their stories. “Every place, every home we come across is simply wonderful. The people who welcome us, who let us stay with them for the night – that’s an incredible experience, an adventure. You can’t single out just one moment from all of that. There’s Kārlis, who guides us, whom we trust and rely on, and there are Kārlis’s songs,” says actor Kaspars Zvīgulis. “I collect people’s stories and stories about places. Velomūzika has been around for many years now. If, 15 years ago, we rode by and saw, for example, the Ārdava or Jezufinova manor house completely half-ruined, and then returned later to find that someone had moved in and was restoring that manor house to its former beauty – those, too, are stories,” said Kārlis Kazāks. The “Velomūzika” acoustic evenings will be open to a wider audience at seven stops along the entire route – beginning with tonight’s concert in Sāviena and concluding the tour on July 1 in Rūjiena. You can follow Velomūzika's route on Facebook.