Balkanalysis.com

Balkan Countries Surprise at Eurovision Love-in

While they didn’t win, some came very close and all in all it was a marvelous showing for the Balkan countries at this year’s Eurovision song contest in Istanbul. Turkey, last year’s winner, did an excellent job of hosting the event, displaying between acts montage after montage of the country’s natural attractions, and in the end giving a rousing penultimate group dance number that northerners perhaps unfairly mocked as “an unusual rendition of RiverDance.” (Actually, there was practically an entire Ottoman army of white-robed, leg-lifting dancers on that stage. And nothing wee Irish lasses in skirts can do quite matches up to gyrating Turkish belly dancers).

No matter. Satisfaction arrived when the Boring States of the north collectively bombed, with the bottom rungs being filled up by the UK, Iceland, Holland, Ireland, Austria and finally poor Norway, humiliated at only 3 points. (By contrast, winner Ukraine took a whopping 280 points and runner-up Serbia & Montenegro, 263 points). Hooray! Many of these entrants seemed to think the “Boy Band” fashion would see them through, but in the end Dutch doo-wop and a British boy with a guitar grinning charismatically like it was 1964 put the audience to sleep. And the positively anemic offering of the Irish, the plaintive “If My World Stopped Turning” by 24 year-old Chris Doran (and written by former Westlife singer Bryan McFadden and Jonathan Shorten) seemed to be a song only a Catholic school headmistress could love.

So yes, there were some songs worse than Tose’s. But our friends at Reality Macedonia do make many valid points when questioning the method Macedonia’s “powers-that-be” use to decide Mr. Proeski’s  song:

“…eliminating the element of competition in this year’s Eurosong in Macedonia was probably a bad idea. On a local level, Toshe would have won an open contest with the other Macedonian performers anyway, but the ensuing appointocracy proved incapable of shouldering the overall burden. In a bizarre reminiscence to communist-times “elections,” when voters usually had to vote for the one candidate, Macedonian audience was supposed to vote for Toshe only, and pick 1 out of 8 songs by local composers written especially for him. Compared to any previous hit song by Toshe, the choice of “the least evil” from the offerings, might best be considered mediocre, even though the Macedonian media managed to persuade the people to like it, by playing it relentlessly.”

There was no question that Tose’s number, “Life” was bombastic, featured insipid lyrics, and was performed without adequate gyrations of back-up dancers. While his minders seemed to have believed the conventional wisdom on electing a song with English lyrics for the Euro audience, the Macedonian original was arguably much better. Yet in the end, Reality Macedonia is right. The song doesn’t hold a candle to any of Tose’s famous hits. In fact, the first draft of our April Fool’s Day piece included a sentence that assured Macedonia he was not seriously going to sing such a terrible song. But so it goes.

Still, you did have to feel bad for the guy, who is by all estimations a very likeable, earnest and humanitarian fellow with a fabulously operatic set of lungs. On Saturday night, poor Tose came off looking like Elvis, what with the flared white jumpsuit and gelled-up hair. And he received precious little support from his back-up singers, who aside from singing hardly moved at all. As past- and present- experience shows, the allotted 6 performers have to be used and used well in order to make a suitably Eurotrash impression on the crowd.

Even though Tose only placed 14^th, meaning that next year’s Macedonian candidate will have to once again go through the first knock-out round in order to win a place in the finals, Macedonia’s neighbors were by and large very charitable with it. Serbia, which loves Tose like a son, was absolutely heroic in awarding its maximum 12 points to Macedonia. This was followed by Bosnia (8), Slovenia (7), Albania (6), Croatia (5) and Turkey (4). Macedonia, on the other hand, was less adept at distributing its points. Its 8 points to Ukraine helped to seal the win for the latter’s arguably sub-par song, “Wild Dances.” But the chief body blow came when “the Former Yugoslave-ian Republic of Macedonia” (as it was cringingly called all night) gave a whole 7 points to Greece- and got nothing in return! Where’s the love?

Well, in the case of Albania, this neighbor got a whole lot of love in the form of Macedonia’s 12 points. (This surpassed even Serbia, which had to settle for 10). From this it seems clear that patriotic Albanians in Macedonia were very active in the tele-voting procedure, disregarding the expense of $1 per text message to get the vote out. This notion lends further credence to Reality Macedonia’s idea of next year’s song being a multi-ethnic duet. (Arguably, were Tose & legendary Roma singer Esme’s duet ‘Magija’ not too old for the contest, this could have been a definite winner).

Even notwithstanding the fairly obvious ethnic vote from йmigrй nations for Albania, in its defense the country did offer one of the undoubtedly best songs of the night, a catchy, guitar-driven pop song belted out by the attractive young Anjeza Shahini. She deserved to place highly and did (7^th, with 106 votes). Among the countries that showed their appreciation with 7 or more points were Switzerland, Sweden, Serbia, Greece and Malta, in addition to Macedonia.

Turkey, which was looking to reprise last year’s victory, added to what appeared to be an all-around public relations coup by breaking the mold and entering a new genre: ska/punk. Unlike the vast majority of candidates, the Turks eschewed the prevailing boy band ballads, as well as the Ricky Martin/Shakira-esque dance numbers. Turkish band Athena, bedecked in tartan and attitude, were the only real rock band of the night and actually offered a song one might expect to hear outside of the Eurovision Song Contest. They managed 4^th place with 195 votes, but made a real impression for European viewers unaware that the Turks have participated in just as much Euro-Atlantic integration as they have on the level of popular culture. Turkey is home to many talented musicians and has long had a thriving rock scene, as the Eurovision tourists had a chance to find out this past weekend.

As for the Greeks, they fought it out to 3^rd place with the astoundingly camp “Shake it,” performed by Sakis Rouvas and his female escorts. Unquestionably the catchiest song of the night, the Greek number was competitive as the voting unfolded and should perhaps have won, being about as Eurotrash as you can get.

The best surprise of the night, however, was Serbia’s heroic second place finish, with the haunting, passionate “Lane Moje” by Ћeljko Joksimovic and his traditional ensemble. The song proved hugely successful, probably because it was so unique, what with the pan-piper and violin-playing woman with enormous fake eyelashes. In the end, Serbia only lost to Ukraine by 17 votes. Serbians relished the success, as it marked the first time in a dozen years that Serbia was participating in the contest. And, despite all the dour political pronouncements from the West regarding the mutual hatred of Balkan countries, the “enemies” mostly treated one another quite well. (Note Albania giving Serbia 7 points, Serbia giving Albania 8 points, Turkey giving Greece 10 points, Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia all giving Serbia 12 points.)

Compared with the above-mentioned songs, however, awarding the crown to ‘Ruslana’s’ Ukrainian offering seems bizarre. At least the performance was. Wearing leather-and-metal costumes some compared to cavemen or creatures from middle earth, a collection of long-legged, long-haired Ukrainians invigorated the crowd with their “Wild Dance,” certain to become stuff of lore if only for its junior-high quality lyrics and ‘mystical’, ‘exotic’ Carpathian arrangement.

Viewers regularly decry the “political” element of the Eurovision voting, which sees allied countries vote for one another’s songs. But to win you need more than that. In this case, it looks like Ruslana’s decision to hit 14 countries on a pre-contest marketing blitz paid off: the Ukrainian captured the top 12 points from Turkey, Israel, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia, not to mention distant Iceland, which handed it to the Ukrainians following Ruslana’s successful appearance there in April. Yet these 7 countries gave a combined 40 points to Serbia, 63 points to Greece, and only 4 points to Macedonia.

There is also part of this practice that detracts from the contest. While the final ranking roughly did separate the wheat from the chaff, adhering to useless loyalties prevented the contest from being more interesting. For example, why did Ireland have to waste 10 good points on a lifeless British flop? And why should Monaco, Andorra and Belgium award France with an entire 39 points when it was obvious the French would not win? Why should Finland and Norway have to come to Sweden’s rescue with equal twelves, when its song was also obviously sub-par? This frustrating aspect of loyalty-in-ignominy takes away from the competivity of the contest.

The fact that the contest does inevitably have pre-contest “favorites” (such as Ukraine and Greece were) should not induce grumblings that everything is “fixed.” Instead it should just remind us that the actual contest begins far before the final night’s event. Marketing and promotion activities play a huge part in this cash cow, a symbol of homogenized Europe having an element of symbolic “nationalism” to it, but primarily a macroeconomic value for the states involved.

So what can we learn from the event? One, that if it comes down to sheer numbers a Slavic country could win every time, especially if the northerners don’t come to their senses and start offering something less soppy and more rousing. (Lots of flesh, and exposed flesh at that is also advised). Two, that good marketing pays off. And three, that “the West” should now realize that there’s quite a lot of talent in the Balkans- well done, boys and girls!

But the most important conclusion one can reach about the kitschy, glittery Eurovision Song Contest, of course, is that it is precisely the sort of thing about which a 1,700-word analysis should not be written. But then again, as with the contest itself, who can resist?