By Philip V. Bohlman
4–10 May 2014. The annual Eurovision week offers Europeans a chance to put aside their differences and celebrate, nation against nation, the many ways in which music unites them. Each nation has the same opportunity—a “Eurosong” of exactly three minutes, performed by no more than six musicians or dancers, in the language of their choice, national or international—to represent Europe for a year. Since its founding in 1956, one of the deepest moments of the Cold War, as Soviet tanks prepared to enter Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) has provided a counterpoint to European politics, providing a moment when Europeans witnessed claims to a common Europeanness.
In early spring 2014, however, as the Ukraine crisis unfolded, the ESC seemed deaf to the deterioration of European politics. A few songs expressed soft nationalism; hardly any made more than a mild gesture toward human rights. Granted, the competitive run of most national entries—through local, regional, and then national competitions—began before the Ukraine crisis, before the occupation of the Maidan in Kyiv, the Russian annexation of the Crimea, and the violent turn of separatism in Eastern Ukraine. The Eurovision Song Contest, nonetheless, had lost its moral compass. It was veering dangerously close to irrelevance for a Europe in crisis.
The Trophy of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. Photo by Thomas Hanses (EBU). 10 May 2014 . © European Broadcasting Union.
All that changed during Eurovision week. Though Austria’s Conchita Wurst, the female persona of 25-year-old singer Tom Neuwirth, had captured the attention of many with her sincere flamboyance, she was favored by few and shunned by many, particularly the countries of Eastern Europe. As the evening of the Grand Finale arrived, however, few doubted that Conchita Wurst would emerge victorious, and many realized that their worst fears were about to be realized. Europe had found Conchita’s voice, and she truly did “Rise Like a Phoenix” from the stage of the Copenhagen Eurovision stage.
As I write this blogpost in the immediate wake of the Grand Finale, the explanations and evaluations of Conchita Wurst’s victory at the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest spread across the European media and beyond. Standing on stage in a gown bathed in golden glitter, the bearded Conchita sang powerfully and with full conviction that there was more at stake than finding the right formula for the winning song. “This night is dedicated to all who believe in peace and freedom,” she proclaimed upon receiving the trophy. Supporters and detractors alike saw the moment as evidence that the queering of the ESC had finally and fully come of age. Eurovision historian, Jan Feddersen, had predicted as much in the Berlin liberal newspaper, tageszeitung, the day before. The queering of the ESC had given common meaning to Europe. Feddersen writes: “One communicates throughout the year. What could be a greater cultural flow of Europeanness, even independent of the borders of the European Union” (taz.europa, 9 May 2014, p. 9).
The political and aesthetic trajectory of queering, of course, is precisely not to come of age, rather to engender and regender critical questions of identity and ideology. It is this moving with and beyond queering that Conchita Wurst’s victory signals. The winning song, “Rise Like a Phoenix,” provides, thus, an anthem of a Europe of post-queerness. The Eurosong and the tens of millions who embrace it as their own enter a European space opened by diversity.
Click here to view the embedded video.
In the months and years before Conchita Wurst’s victory on Saturday night, there were probably few grounds that would lead one to predict a winning song for Austria. The self-styled “Land of Music,” Austria simply could not figure out the Eurovision Song Contest. In recent years, it had sent wacky folk-like music and banal power ballads, only occasionally passing beyond the semi-final competitions. For much of the 2010s, Austria sent no entry at all. If Austria was perplexed about its musical presence in the ESC, Conchita Wurst was not. Born in Styria, Tom Neuwirth dedicated himself to a music of difference, a music that provoked, and a music that did political work. As the drag queen, Conchita Wurst (most readers will recognize “Wurst” as the German word for sausage, but in Austria, it is also commonly used in the phrase, “es ist mir wurst,” meaning “it’s all the same to me”), performs songs of action, directed against prejudice and mustered for diversity. There is no contradiction when queerness and nationalism occupy common ground, all the more in an Austria that provides shelter to a higher percentage of refugees than any other European nation. When Conchita remarked upon qualifying after the second semi-final on May 8, announcing proudly that “I’m going to do all I can for my country,” there was no irony.
The Eurovision Song Contest 2014 had found its voice. The ESC had returned to Europe. At a critical moment of struggle in Ukraine, when right-wing European political parties on the eve of European parliamentary elections are calling for their nations to retreat from Europe, the ESC has reclaimed its relevance, and it has done so by recognizing its historical foundations. In many ways, Conchita Wurst, performing as a transvestite, offers a less provocative stage presence than the transsexual Dana International, who won for Israel in 1998 and competed again in 2011. ESC queerness begins to demonstrate the attributes of a historical longue durée, and it is for these reasons that it elevates a music competition to a European level on which it is one of the most visible targets for official Russian homophobia and the violation of human rights elsewhere in Europe. It is a return to that history that “Rise Like a Phoenix” so powerfully signifies.
On Saturday night, there were other entries that took their place in the more diverse, post-queer Europe given new and different meaning by Conchita Wurst. Political meaning accrued to songs in which it had previously remained neutral (e.g., Pollapönk’s “No Prejudice” for Iceland, and Molly’s “Children of the Universe” for the United Kingdom). Several quite outstanding songs came to envoice a fragile Europe in need of change (e.g., Elaiza’s mixture of cabaret and klezmer in “Is It Right” for Germany, and András Kállay-Saunders’s “Running” for Hungary). Kállay-Saunders transformed the narrative of an abused child to a call for action in European human rights. The son of Pharaoh Saunders, Kállay-Saunders is a stunning presence on stage, an African American Hungarian, calling attention to the violation of human rights while representing a nation sliding to the right, so much so that many Hungarian artists, musicians, and intellectuals (e.g., András Schiff) will not enter their homeland.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Click here to view the embedded video.
On Sunday morning, 11 May, the Berlin tageszeitung opened its lead article on the Eurovision Song Contest with the celebratory claim, “there is hope for Europe.” It is perhaps too early to claim that we are witnessing music and nationalism in a new key. From early April until the Grand Finale, I gave a regular series of newspaper, radio, and television interviews in Germany, where I currently teach as Franz Rosenzweig Professor at the University of Kassel, and I realize only now that my own observations about nationalism and the ESC underwent radical change, all the more as Conchita Wurst brought a new Europe into focus (see, e.g., the interview with the Austrian-German-Swiss network, 3sat, just before the Grand Finale). The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) itself had predicted 120 million viewers, but estimates the day after the Grand Finale raised the number to 180 million, a fifty-percent increase. Nationalisms proliferate often; rarely do they subside. In the Ukraine crisis, each side accuses the other of being nationalistic, laying claim to their own right to be nationalistic. These are the nationalisms in the old key, collapsing in upon themselves. In contrast it may be a quality of a post-queer Eurovision Song Contest that it can foster a nationalism of tolerance and diversity, and that its song for Europe truly rises like a phoenix, enjoining the many rather than the few to join the chorus.
Philip V. Bohlman is Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago. Currently, he serves as Franz Rosenzweig Professor at the University of Kassel, and on the editorial board of Grove Music Online. He writes widely on music and nationalism, most recently Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe (Routledge 2011). He is writing the book, Music after Nationalism, for Oxford University Press, a project for which he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013.
Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only music articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
The post “There Is Hope for Europe” – The ESC 2014 and the return to Europe appeared first on OUPblog.
We here at Three Percent clearly love Eurovison. To celebrate this year’s version of the World’s Greatest Music Competition we asked Latvian writer Janis Stirna to write a month-long series of articles about all the contestants. In our excitement to “get to the whale” (so to speak), we knew we wouldn’t have time to adequately translate his pieces, so we asked him to write in English, which he assured us wasn’t a problem. (Everyone in Latvia knows English, apparently.) His next post will be about more of the semi-finalists and will probably contain lots of videos . . . Enjoy!
Hello my friends.
Welcome to month of May, that of many things is also month of Eurovision! You are asking what is Eurovision? Why, Eurovision is only most important songgames contest in Europe and other countries You do not know are to exist either! In Eurovision times, is time for us to show whole world how many talent is we have (and sometimes how many awful is we have too—as example how we have no good musics, or how much dancing and how covered in buttocks our mens is or how much pretty and how covered in breasts our womens is—and how few clothings they all can wearing). Is also time for us to show all world fundamental approximations of European politics and what countries are best friends and what countries think what other countries should go to home of Devil Satan in wicker box with handle. Is true!
How is Eurovision contest working? Firstly, all countries play songgames in their motherlands for to choose what music to send to big songgames contest. Because Azerbaijan land was winning last year, Eurovision contest is this year in Baku. So then all countries this year play their songgames and are having their peoples voting, then take their country’s winner and say “Hello, Baku, we are to sending of ________ for big songgames contest!” And Baku say “Okay, motherland friends, we are welcoming of ________ to Baku and see You in end of May goodbye!”
Secondly and thirdly Baku is welcoming all countries that are participate in Eurovision and all peoples are watching semi-finals 1 and 2. In this year of 2012 will be participate 42 countries—is already 5 of countries, sometimes called “big countries” which are every year automatical in grand final because they are big and puffy-headed and are always best always, even when they have silly song or song that make You want for self-knifings in ear and eyes and sometimes arms. These are countries United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, France. Also winner from year previous is getting to be already in grand final with puffy-head lands. Is only making sense.
In semi-finals 1 and 2 and in grand final all peoples of all 42 countries are making voting on SMS. One may not voting for own motherland, but one may voting for all other countries. In all times one may voting on SMS 20 votings. I do not know what happening if voting for own motherland, maybe they finding You and making You for to sleep with angry pigs or drinking of strange poisons for example this liquid I have heard in stories Rootbeer. In stories it is brown and magic and tasting at same time of pig mud and sunshines and how childrens of Americas they love it. Pig mud?! How is they not poisoned?
Then comes grand finals times. So good times! Grand finals is taking 10 countries from semi-finals 1 and 10 countries from semi-finals 2 and 5 big puffy-head countries and also Baku and making of big Eurovision songgames times. All grand finals countries are singing once more and hoping for peoples to make voting for them on SMS. Votings are then make by every 42 motherlands playing 2012 Eurovision songgames and giving points of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and then 10 and 12 for specified motherland favorite. Is also Jury making votings, but no peoples are caring. Sorry Jury!
