Estonian bagpipes looped through effects processors, layered over acid basslines generated by Roland TB-303 clones. That is the sound at the centre of OOPUS, the duo of Johanne Ahun and Mari Meentalo, who spent years occupying a space that did not officially exist in Estonia’s music ecosystem. Electronic music events booked DJs. Folk music festivals booked acoustic ensembles. A project combining both fell through the gap. So they built their own platform, named it Folktronica, and started programming stages where artists working in a similar hybrid territory could find each other. Eight years on, the model is holding. Folk events now book electronic acts that draw on traditional material. Clubs are more open to live instrumentation. As they move towards their third album, Reivlender, due on 4 February 2026, and release “Sissejuhatus”, the record’s closing track and lead single, today, the harbour they built is no longer an island.
We meet them on WOMEX‘s final afternoon in Tampere, late October. The expo is winding down, but still at full tilt. Delegates cram in last-minute meetings, deals are sketched out in three languages at once, and everyone tries to be in two places simultaneously. Ahun and Meentalo have claimed a corner at Radio WOMEX. An hour has been carved out within their own tight schedule. Their showcase the previous night on the Northern Connections Stage is still fresh. A seated concert hall began with industry professionals lined up in rows, listening at polite attention. It ended with those same delegates dancing, properly dancing, not the reserved head-nodding that usually passes for enthusiasm at export events. For the duo, this is exactly the response Folktronica was built to generate: a live test of whether Estonian bagpipes routed through effects and acid synth lines can move crowds far from home.
An OOPUS set is built to make that case. Meentalo stands centre, playing Estonian bagpipes and mouth harp, with vocals feeding into a chain of loopers. Ahun works with synthesisers and controllers, shaping basslines, kick patterns and filter sweeps in real time. Dancer Raho Aadla moves between the stage and the audience. He picks up cues from the rhythms and translates them into sharp, grounded choreography that references folk steps without copying them. Behind them, visuals by Aleksander Sprohgis cut between Finno-Ugric-inspired motifs, landscape fragments, and abstract graphic sequences. These are all synced to shifts in the music. Sound, movement and image function as a single system, closer to a late-night club ritual than a standard showcase slot.
The route to that setup runs back to Viljandi Culture Academy, part of Tartu University, where Ahun and Meentalo first crossed paths. He was studying sound engineering, learning the structures behind recording and mixing. She specialised in Estonian traditional music, focusing on the Estonian bagpipe. Once they began rehearsing together, they realised they shared an obsession with electronic dance music and a curiosity about what might happen if they combined it with acoustic performance rooted in Finno-Ugric tradition.
“When we started rehearsing together and found this shared passion for electronic dance music and live performance, and started thinking about how to combine them, we suddenly felt like we were having fun on a small floating ice island somewhere out in the deep ocean,” Ahun recalls. “We could see through binoculars that there was land in every direction. Great parties happening everywhere. But there we were, just the two of us, with no backup plan. And nobody was inviting us, saying, hey, come over here, we have a good harbour waiting for you.”
The existing structures were not going to shift in their direction, so they set about creating a space for themselves.
“We realised we had to collect all the small pieces of driftwood from the sea and start building our own harbour. That’s what we call Folktronica.”
What began as a response to being miscategorised is now a showcase stage that they programme at major Estonian events. In April 2026, they will once again host the Folktronica Stage at Tallinn Music Week, the capital’s showcase festival. The platform took shape in 2020, when a few promoters were willing to place live electronics in folk contexts or traditional material in club settings.
“There weren’t many events in Estonia where we fit,” Meentalo explains. “The electronic music scene wasn’t booking live bands. That was just the reality. And on the folk music side, we were too electronic. We didn’t belong to either world.”
They built a space where artists working in comparable ways could find each other. “We saw that there were so many other artists, so many other bands, who needed this kind of platform. A place to come together, create connections and showcase what they were doing.”
The concept was never intended as a closed brand. Anyone can adapt it elsewhere, Ahun stresses, as long as they understand what it involves.
“If someone wants to do a Folktronica stage somewhere in the world, that is totally allowed. It is not something we are trying to own. Just please do it. But you have to know both sides: live club electronic music and live bands. All the DJ equipment, the vinyl, the microphones, the backline, the sound systems, the lights, the visuals, the logistics. It is a lot.”
The platform has also become a way to measure change. “With the Folktronica Showcase at Tallinn Music Week, we collect data. We started from level zero, so we had no idea what the result would be. The focus is on gradual growth rather than chasing one million or one hundred million followers.” He gestures to the small team travelling with them and sitting in on the interview. “Today, we have Aurelia Kuum and Merylin Poks helping OOPUS. We want to be able to show numbers, to see whether the ideas we had at the beginning are confirmed or even go beyond what we imagined.”
Both had spent time on the organisational side before OOPUS existed. Ahun played percussion with electronic musicians and DJs. Meentalo brought flute, mouth harp and vocals into underground parties and helped run the events themselves. By the time they met at Viljandi, they already knew that club systems and folk material could coexist on the same floor.
“From the very beginning, we understood that Estonian traditional music and electronic dance music work really well together,” Ahun explains. “If you think about what traditional music was designed to do, keeping people on the dance floor, the same principles apply to electronic dance music. Small variations. Repetition that builds and releases. You are not thinking in terms of three-minute songs. You need different elements to play with, to extend, to transform.”
For OOPUS, that link is practical rather than symbolic. Traditional dance forms and contemporary club tracks both exist to sustain long spells of collective dancing, and their sets are built with that in mind. “When we feel the audience getting onto the same wavelength as us, we can start playing with the elements,” Meentalo says. “We do not stick to a rigid song structure. We approach our music the way DJs do.”
Their experience on both sides of the stage has turned things like riders, backline lists and PA specs from abstractions into tools they actively use to shape their shows.
“When you are an organiser, you can look in the mirror and imagine yourself as the picky artist,” Ahun reflects. “You are the one asking for things. But suddenly you are also the one who has to answer: OK, can we actually make this work? Is this request legitimate, or is it a fantasy? You figure out what is doable through your own experience. And it turns out that quite a lot is doable.”
The complexity of their setup exposes the limits of standard categories. Electronic venues expect DJ gear: decks, mixers, controllers. Folk venues expect microphones for acoustic instruments and a basic PA. OOPUS need both, plus routing that lets Ahun manipulate Meentalo’s looped signals in real time.
“For electronic music people, our rider looks like it is from another planet, because we are so live. And for folk music people, it is like, we do not know what any of these cables are for. It is a constant challenge.”
That experience has recalibrated their sense of what counts as a reasonable demand. “Once you have experienced both sides, you realise that asking for tea backstage is not some diva request. At first, it might sound like someone has become an A-grade superstar. But no. It is just the basics. We try to put all the framework in place so that everyone can have fun.”
The band’s official birthday is 10 November 2017, though the project had started taking shape the year before. From the start, they anticipated questions from traditional music circles. Would electronic processing of archival material be accepted as a continuation or dismissed as a distortion? Historical precedent offered reassurance.
“The first Estonian electronic folk dance album came out in 1985,” Ahun notes. The record, Old Estonian Waltzes by Olev Muska, merged traditional dance forms with the synthesiser technology of its era. “When you listen to that album now, it still sounds fresh. It was incredibly forward-thinking. So when people tell us we are inventing something new, we have to say: actually, we are not. This has been happening for decades.”
Meentalo’s grounding in traditional practice runs deep. At Viljandi, she studied not only instrumental technique but also vocal mannerisms and regional singing styles preserved in archival recordings.
“The way I approach traditional music in our band is faithful to how it was actually done,” she says. “If I am working from a specific archive recording, I follow that style exactly. We are very aware of what we are doing and where it comes from.”
In 2017, at Mooste Elohelü, an annual event where musicians arrange a set tune and perform an original piece, Meentalo was recognised by Ingrid Rüütel, one of the central figures in Estonian folklore studies. Rüütel’s field recordings and transcriptions have documented traditional music across the country and beyond for decades. Ahun calls her “a true sound engineer pioneer,” emphasising the technical dimension of her work alongside the scholarly.
Estonia’s institutional support for traditional music is unusually robust for a country of 1.3 million. Tartu University, through Viljandi Culture Academy, and the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre both offer professional-level training. MUBA, the Music and Ballet School in Tallinn, and Heino Eller Music School in Tartu run applied programmes in traditional and world music. Viljandi has taught Estonian traditional music for close to thirty years.
“You can become a professional traditional musician there,” Meentalo says. “It is not just about becoming a scholar or a folklorist. You can build a career as a performer.”
That training now extends to the technical demands of amplified and studio work. “When you train as an Estonian traditional musician, you also learn how to place a microphone, how to work with amplification, how to record,” Ahun says. “What used to seem exceptional is becoming standard.”
He traces the present-day framework back to a longer history of documentation and survival. Much of Estonia’s musical heritage was collected by non-Estonians, folklorists and ethnomusicologists who recorded traditions before war and political rupture could erase them. Because significant portions of those collections were held abroad, they survived the twentieth century’s upheavals.
“A lot of this was saved because non-Estonians collected it and kept it outside the country. Now we are bringing that data back. There is so much of it that you can really trace what was in the past.”
Meentalo cites more than 1.5 million runo songs held in national archives, much of it captured before the century’s most destructive phases. “We are not fully aware of the treasure that exists in those archives. We are only seeing the first vibrations before the storm really hits.”
She points to composer Veljo Tormis, whose 95th birth anniversary falls this year, as central to the story. During the Soviet period, when official culture demanded socialist forms, his choral works kept traditional Estonian singing styles alive in public life. “Through his work, those songs stayed with us.”
For Ahun, working inside this network of institutions, archives and repertoires carries personal weight. “If someone asks what the purpose of life is, for me it would be to fulfil your dream through your own heritage storyline. You go into it, investigate, try things, fall hard, get back up and try another round. Music and dance are a very good way to do that.”
OOPUS’s recorded output currently comprises two studio albums. The first, Nõidus (Sorcery), was recorded, mixed and mastered by José Diogo Neves, a Portuguese sound engineer based in Estonia. At that stage, Ahun considered himself too inexperienced to handle the full process, so Neves took charge. The title reflected the uncertainty surrounding the project.
“We were asking ourselves: what is this sorcery we are making? Is it allowed? Is it forbidden? Will the Folk Police accept it, or will we end up behind bars? So we named the album accordingly.”
For the second album, Folk on Acid, Ahun and Meentalo handled more of the production themselves, with Neves mastering. The title had surfaced during the first sessions, when Neves remarked on what they were building.
“While we were recording the first album, José said, hey, this sounds like folk on acid. We loved the phrase immediately. But when you listen to the first album, it is not quite there yet. The second album was where we actually grew into that name. The phrase was waiting for us to catch up.”
Reivlender takes its title from a word Meentalo suggested during rehearsal. She first proposed it for a track, but it stuck until it became the album’s name. It carries a double meaning. In English, the components suggest a lender of raves, someone who provides the conditions for collective ecstatic experience. In Estonian, reilender is a traditional dance.
“Reivlender is where the traditional dance meets the rave,” Ahun explains. “When you think about old dances, they were also hypnotic. You did not start and stop in neat segments. It was a continuous flow, with combinations, variations, and solos. The same logic that drives a good rave.”
The album’s closing track, “Sissejuhatus” (Introduction), positions the end of the record as a threshold rather than a conclusion. Meentalo heard its melody in a dream and woke in time to record it.
“Sometimes inspiration can reach you anywhere, at any moment. I happened to wake up at the right time to remember the melody and record it before it disappeared.”
Nõidus was an introduction, a first attempt to put their concept into recorded form. Folk on Acid pushed further into dance-floor territory. Reivlender, in Meentalo’s view, opens outward again. “With the third album, we are more open to different sounds, different elements that inspire us. It has been quite a journey to get here.”
Merylin Poks, who has worked with OOPUS from the early days and is closely involved in the rollout of Reivlender, offers an outside perspective. She stresses the Finno-Ugric core of the project, from melodies and lyrics to mythological references.
“It is amazing to see how this Finno-Ugric tradition is taken to the stage. It is more like a performance than just a musical act. Even people who do not know the language understand it quickly because the show is so visual. The music can go from very techno to something milder, so it speaks to many different audiences.”
Ahun’s live rig runs TB-303 clones for portability alongside Meentalo’s looped bagpipes, vocals and mouth harp. The palette draws on acid, techno, house and psy-trance, threaded through with the sonic textures of Estonian traditional music.
“We are not inventing a bicycle,” Ahun says. “We are just using the bicycles that already exist to investigate our own path and have fun with it, staying true to our own roots without telling anyone what is right or wrong.”
Their ambitions reach beyond their own bookings. “We want to hack the system. We want traditional music to be completely relevant in mainstream clubs. We want parents and grandparents telling their kids: you have to go to the club, because that is where your tradition lives now. Back in the old days, it was village gatherings, swings, and bonfires. Now we have clubs. Maybe we can slowly merge those worlds, so that local traditional music becomes part of what you hear on the dance floor everywhere.”
In Estonia, signs of that shift are already visible. “Folk music events are now booking electronic artists who use traditional material,” Meentalo observes. “It is becoming more open. That has been incredible to witness.” She points to wider patterns. “Even at Eurovision, you see it now. The acts that finish in the top five or top ten are increasingly using their own roots music. That shift is real.”
Asked to define their audience, they refuse to narrow it by age or category. “We have seen everyone from newborns to people on the edge of the grave,” Ahun says. “And they are all raving. That is our audience.”
He connects that reach to what they have learned about dynamics on stage. “We have seen how music can hack a person. When you start out as a musician, you wind yourself up very easily and sometimes it ends in an explosion. It is important to master the drop and also how to bring the tension back down, to dissolve it. When you learn those tools, you can work under the skin with a positive intention.”
By the time we finish talking, someone is already waiting at the door for the last interview slot. Outside, the expo is breaking down: badges come off, trolleys fill with leftover promo material, banners are lowered and stands folded away as final handshakes close the remaining deals. Delegates head for hotel rooms, airport buses or the station. Ahun and Meentalo check their phones, work out where they need to be next and slip back into the thinning crowd. WOMEX will be over in a few hours; their attention is already moving towards the Reivlender release and the next Folktronica Stage at Tallinn Music Week. The harbour they once imagined building from scattered pieces of driftwood now feels like a working route, with more and more traffic finding its way in.