In 1954, on March 31, Laima Vaikule was born in Cēsis – a singer, dancer, and pop-stage director who rose from Riga restaurant and variety stages to become one of Latvia’s most recognizable pop-music voices beyond the country’s borders. Her international career was especially lifted in the 1980s by her collaboration with Raimonds Pauls, her victory at “Bratislava Lyre” in 1987, and later by her own festival “Laima Rendezvous Jūrmala,” which again made Jūrmala a broad meeting place for music.

Vaikule’s career vividly shows how late-Soviet pop entertainment could become an international platform for Latvian artists. Her approach – treating each song as a staged story with choreography, costume, and scenography – differed markedly from many of her contemporaries’ performances.