“I like to be bored with children” – ZZ.lv

“I have returned to Elea,” says Haralds Švītiņš. The middle-aged man has a seemingly unusual basic job – a singing teacher at the “Kamenīte” pre-school educational institution in Eleja. Eleja is Harald’s native village. He was born 58 years ago in Eleja Hospital. However, Harald Švītiņas is most widely known as the leader of events, Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, the bears Pooh, the Frog, the rooster, the woodcutter and the performer of various other characters. He is also a musician at weddings, balls and sometimes funerals. In his free time from his main job, Harald creates important honors in the lives of big and small residents of Elej, Sesavnik, vilsenki, Platoniki and other residents of Jelgava region. And this has been happening for some forty years.

“It’s definitely a coincidence that I ended up in the field of education,” says Harald about his primary job in kindergarten. In the visions of his future profession during the elementary school years, the boy did not show anything like that. However, he has been attracted to stage boards since childhood, when he learned to play the piano at the Eleja branch of the Jelgava Music School. After completing elementary school classes at Eleja High School, Haralds went to study at Jelgava Music High School, where he joined the choir. “After elementary school, I didn’t even know what I really wanted. But there was a thought: if I have graduated from a children’s music school, then it still has value, and I need to go further in this field alone.”

At that time, a vocal-instrumental ensemble had been formed in Eleja State Farm. There, Harald was invited to play keyboards. Thus, when he was in the eighth grade, his first ball began as a musician. “If a friend asked me to play something for fun at a party, I didn’t have to say twice,” Harald recalls this time with pleasure.

After the music secondary school, military service was compulsory in Soviet times. In 1988, he started singing in the State Academic Choir “Latvija”, where there was a tenor vacancy at the time, and also in the choir of the Latvian Academy of Arts. It so happened that in January 1991 – during the barricades – Haraldas Švītins’ workplace was in Old Riga, the State Academic Choir had rehearsals there. “I was not in the burning point of the barricades. However, every evening in Daugavmala, we sang folk songs and the repertory of the revival period,” said Haralds Švītiņš, without distinguishing himself. He also remembers January 20, 1991, when tracer bullets flew right there near the choir dormitories in Bastejkalna and four people lost their lives.