 1,003 singers and 30 orchestra players participated in the first festival.Only once has the festival been held outside Riga, in Jelgava in 1895.After the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 and World War II, festivals were continued in the Latvian SSR, heavily influenced by Soviet ideology and used to praise the occupation regime, with the festival being held every 5 years on important anniversaries of the nation's forced accession as a Union Republic, while the festival was held in 1973 to mark its centennial anniversary and in 1977 to mark the diamond jubilee of the October Revolution, both events connected to the centennial commemorations of The First Latvian National Awakening.