Empire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest

337 Pages·2013·9.698 MB·English

by  Dafni Tragaki

Europea: Ethnomusicologies and Modernities
Series Editors: Philip V. Bohlman and Martin Stokes
1. Celtic Modern: Music at the Global Fringe, edited by Martin Stokes and
Philip V. Bohlman, 2003.
2. Albanian Urban Lyric Song in the 1930s, by Eno Koço, 2004.
3. The Mediterranean in Music: Critical Perspectives, Common Concerns,
Cultural Differences, edited by David Cooper and Kevin Dawe, 2005.
4. On a Rock in the Middle of the Ocean: Songs and Singers in Tory Island,
Ireland, by Lillis Ó Laoire, 2005.
5. Transported by Song: Corsican Voices from Oral Tradition to World Stage,
by Caroline Bithell, 2007.
6. Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene: Music, Image, and Re-
gional Political Discourse, edited by Donna A. Buchanan, 2007.
7. Music and Musicians in Crete: Performance and Ethnography in a Mediter-
ranean Island Society, by Kevin Dawe, 2007.
8. The New (Ethno)musicologies, edited by Henry Stobart, 2008.
9. Balkan Refrain: Form and Tradition in European Folk Song, by Dimitrije
O. Golemović, 2010.
10. Music and Displacement: Diasporas, Mobilities, and Dislocations in Europe
and Beyond, edited by Erik Levi and Florian Scheding, 2010.
11. Balkan Epic: Song, History, Modernity, edited by Philip V. Bohlman and
Nada Petković, 2012.
12. What Makes Music European: Looking beyond Sound, by Marcello Sorce
Keller, 2012.
13. The Past Is Always Present: The Revival of the Byzantine Musical Tradition
at Mount Athos, Tore Tvarnø Lind, 2012.
14. Becoming an Ethnomusicologist: A Miscellany of Influences, by Bruno
Nettl, 2013.
15. Εmpire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, edited
by Dafni Tragaki, 2013.
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EUROPEA: ETHNOMUSICOLOGIES AND MODERNITIES
Series Editors: Philip V. Bohlman and Martin Stokes
The new millennium challenges ethnomusicologists, dedicated to studying the
music of the world, to examine anew the Western musics they have treated as
“traditional,” and to forge new approaches to world musics that are often over-
looked because of their deceptive familiarity. As the modern discipline of ethno-
musicology expanded during the second half of the twentieth century, influenced
significantly by ethnographic methods in the social sciences, ethnomusicology’s
“field” increasingly shifted to the exoticized Other. The comparative methodolo-
gies previously generated by Europeanist scholars to study and privilege Western
musics were deliberately discarded. Europe as a cultural area was banished to
historical musicology, and European vernacular musics became the spoils left to
folk-music and, later, popular-music studies.
Europea challenges ethnomusicology to return to Europe and to encounter its
disciplinary past afresh, and the present is a timely moment to do so. European
unity nervously but insistently asserts itself through the political and cultural
agendas of the European Union, causing Europeans to reflect on a bitterly and
violently fragmented past and its ongoing repercussions in the present, and to
confront new challenges and opportunities for integration. There is also an intel-
lectual moment to be seized as Europeans reformulate the history of the present,
an opportunity to move beyond the fragmentation and atomism the later twenti-
eth century has bequeathed and to enter into broader social, cultural, and political
relationships.
Europea is not simply a reflection of and on the current state of research.
Rather, the volumes in this series move in new directions and experiment with
diverse approaches. The series establishes a forum that can engage scholars, musi-
cians, and other interlocutors in debates and discussions crucial to understanding
the present historical juncture. This dialogue, grounded in ethnomusicology’s
interdisciplinarity, will be animated by reflexive attention to the specific social
configurations of knowledge of and scholarship on the musics of Europe. Such
knowledge and its circulation as ethnomusicological scholarship are by no means
dependent on professional academics, but rather are conditioned, as elsewhere,
by complex interactions between universities, museums, amateur organizations,
state agencies, and markets. Both the broader view to which ethnomusicology
aspires and the critical edge necessary to understanding the present moment are
served by broadening the base on which “academic” discussion proceeds.
“Europe” will emerge from the volumes as a space for critical dialogue, em-
bracing competing and often antagonistic voices from across the continent, across
the Atlantic, across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and across a world
altered ineluctably by European colonialism and globalization. The diverse sub-
jects and interdisciplinary approaches in individual volumes capture something
of—and, in a small way, become part of—the jangling polyphony through which
the “New Europe” has explosively taken musical shape in public discourse, in
expressive culture, and, increasingly, in political form. Europea: Ethnomusicolo-
gies and Modernities aims to provide a critical framework necessary to capture
something of the turbulent dynamics of music performance, engaging the forces
that inform and deform, contest and mediate the senses of identity, selfhood, be-
longing, and progress that shape “European” musical experience in Europe and
across the world.
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Εmpire of Song
Europe and Nation in the
Eurovision Song Contest
Edited by Dafni Tragaki
Europea: Ethnomusicologies
and Modernities #15
The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
2013
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Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2013 by Dafni Tragaki
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Empire of song : Europe and nation in the Eurovision Song Contest / edited by
Dafni Tragaki.
pages cm.— (Europea: ethnomusicologies and modernities ; 15)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Summary: “The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is more than a musical event
that ostensibly “unites European people” through music. It is a spectacle and
performative event, one that allegorically represents the idea of “Europe.”
In “Empire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest,”
contributors interpret the ESC as a musical “mediascape” and mega-event that
has variously performed and performs the changing visions of the European
project. Through the study of the cultural politics of the ESC, essayists discuss
the ways in which music operates as a dynamic nexus for making national
identities and European sensibilities, generating processes of ‘assimilation’ or
‘integration,’ and defining the celebrated notion of the ‘European citizen’ in a
global context.”
ISBN 978-0-8108-8699-5 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8108-8817-3 (electronic)
1. Eurovision Song Contest. 2. Music—Competitions—Europe. 3. Music—
Social aspects—Europe. 4. Music—Political aspects—Europe. I. Tragaki, Dafni,
editor.
ML76.E87E47 2013
780.794—dc23 2013002017
™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Foreword: War without Tears: European Broadcasting
and Competition vii
Franco Fabbri
Introduction 1
Dafni Tragaki
1 Tempus Edax Rerum: Time and the Making of the
Eurovision Song 35
Philip V. Bohlman
2 Eurovision Everywhere: A Kaleidoscopic Vision of the
Grand Prix 57
Andrea F. Bohlman and Ioannis Polychronakis
3 The Nordic Brotherhoods: Eurovision as a Platform for
Partnership and Competition 79
Annemette Kirkegaard
4 The Big Match: Literature, Cinema, and the Sanremo
Festival Deception 109
Goffredo Plastino
5 Performing Affiliation: On Topos in the Swedish Preliminaries 137
Karin Strand
6 Delimiting the Eurobody: Historicity, Politicization, Queerness 151
Apostolos Lampropoulos
v
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vi Contents
7 The Oriental Body on the European Stage: Producing
Turkish Cultural Identity on the Margins of Europe 173
Thomas Solomon
8 Invincible Heroes: The Musical Construction of National
and European Identities in Swedish Eurovision Song
Contest Entries 203
Alf Björnberg
9 “And After Love . . . ”: Eurovision, Portuguese Popular
Culture, and the Carnation Revolution 221
Luisa Pinto Teixeira and Martin Stokes
10 The Monsters’ Dream: Fantasies of the Empire Within 241
Dafni Tragaki
11 The Rise and Fall of the Singing Tiger: Ireland and Eurovision 261
Tony Langlois
12 Doing the European Two-Step 281
Andrea F. Bohlman and Alexander Rehding
Index 299
About the Contributors 317
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Foreword
War without Tears
European Broadcasting and Competition
F F
RANCO ABBRI
The perception of the term “Eurovision” varies with time and place.
Fans, journalists, and scholars alike, in many European countries and in
other continents, seem to have adopted it—at least in the past ten/fifteen
years—as a shorter form for “Eurovision Song Contest” (ESC). But it
hasn’t been so forever. For decades, even after the early mass success of
the ESC in the late 1960s, “Eurovision” has been associated mainly with
international television broadcasts of various kinds under the heading of
the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), and especially with the visual
and musical identifiers of Eurovision network transmissions: the Eurovi-
sion logo and Charpentier’s Prelude to the Te Deum respectively. From
sports events (Olympic Games and world championships for athletics,
swimming and other Olympic sports; football matches in the FIFA World
Cup or in European championships, or in international club competitions;
the alpine ski World Cup and winter Olympics; bicycle races like Tour de
France and Giro d’Italia; the Davis Cup and other tennis championships,
etc.) to cultural events (especially the Neujahrkonzert from Vienna) and
“light” entertainment (for a while Italy’s Sanremo Festival, and of course
the ESC since its inception), Eurovision broadcasts used to be opened by
the identifier, with the logo changing from the one of the local broadcaster
to the one of the remote transmitter, and the Prelude repeating accord-
ingly. Among my peers, when I was a teenager, it was common to refer
to an important football match we were waiting for by singing the last
phrase of the Prelude and then imitating the sound of the stadium’s crowd
applauding and shouting: “Hhhhhhhhh . . .” And then, the commenta-
tor would start with his welcome to TV watchers. The ritual had also
technical reasons, giving TV engineers from both sides of the connection
vii
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viii Foreword
enough time to establish and check it, before airing the actual broadcast.
In fact, an equivalent procedure is still in use in EBU’s Euroradio circuit,
where concerts are preceded by the Ouverture from Monteverdi’s Orfeo.
On television, the move from ground microwave repeaters to satellite
connections and computer-controlled switching procedures put an end
to the usage of the identifiers, which steal precious time from advertising
inserts: so, the ritual only remained for those broadcasts which are espe-
cially prestigious for the EBU. After the mid-1990s, Charpentier’s Prelude
has been associated mostly with the New Year Concert and the ESC.
Place is also relevant. Many countries (or, to be precise, nationwide
broadcasting companies) adhered to the EBU before—even long before—
they started participating in the ESC, as shown in table 1.1 on the next page.
Generally, it can be seen that for many countries in Western Europe
(but also for Albania, Turkey, and Greece) “Eurovision” was for a while
(a long while, in those instances) mainly the public name for EBU services
and broadcasts, which might include the ESC (in some cases, with other
participating countries), along with sports events of any kind and other
entertainment programs. On the contrary, most countries in Eastern
Europe became EBU members in 1993 (or soon after), and started par-
ticipating in the ESC almost immediately, just around the time when the
“Eurovision” identifier was dropped from regular international broad-
casts, with the exceptions of the ESC and the New Year Concert. The ESC
didn’t become largely popular, even in the participating countries, before
the late 1960s, so an articulated pattern can be observed: (1) countries
that adhered early to the EBU and soon participated in the ESC, before
the ESC became largely popular (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France,
Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Switzerland, United
Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Sweden); (2) countries that adhered early
to the EBU and possibly received the ESC as one of EBU’s offerings, but
started participating later (Norway, Portugal, Spain, Yugoslavia); (3)
countries that adhered to the EBU later and started participating in the
ESC when it was already popular, but before the Eurovision identifier
was discontinued (Israel, Greece, Turkey, Iceland, Cyprus, Morocco); (4)
countries that adhered to the EBU and started participating in the ESC
when it was already popular, in coincidence with or after the discontinu-
ation of the Eurovision identifier (all remaining countries in the table, i.e.,
Eastern European countries, with few exceptions). Albania (1962–2004)
and Malta (1970–1971) cannot easily be included in the above categories,
although Albania can be assimilated to other Eastern European countries.
Every country has its own EBU and ESC history, of course. Italy is
one of the examples of a distinctive position. RAI, Italy’s state-owned
broadcasting company, launched in 1948 (two years before the EBU was
founded) the Prix Italia, a prize for radio programs—that later incorpo-
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Table 1.1. EBU Membership and ESC Participation: Time Lapse by Country
Country EBU ESC Years lapsed
Belgium 1950 1956 6
Denmark 1950 1957 7
Finland 1950 1961 11
France 1950 1956 6
Greece 1950 1974 24
Ireland 1950 1965 15
Italy 1950 1956 6
Luxembourg 1950 1956 6
Monaco 1950 1959 9
Netherlands 1950 1956 6
Norway 1950 1960 10
Portugal 1950 1964 14
Switzerland 1950 1956 6
Turkey 1950 1975 25
UK (BBC) 1950 1957 7
Yugoslavia 1950 1961 11
Germany 1952 1956 4
Austria 1953 1957 4
Spain 1955 1961 6
Sweden 1955 1958 3
Iceland 1956 1986 30
Israel 1957 1973 16
Albania 1962 2004 42
Cyprus 1969 1981 12
Morocco 1969 1980 11
Malta 1970 1971 1
Belarus 1993 2004 11
Bosnia & Herzegovina 1993 1993 0
Bulgaria 1993 2005 12
Croatia 1993 1993 0
Czech Republic 1993 2007 14
Estonia 1993 1994 1
Hungary 1993 1994 1
Latvia 1993 2000 7
Lithuania 1993 1994 1
Macedonia 1993 1998 5
Moldova 1993 2005 12
Poland 1993 1994 1
Romania 1993 1994 1
Russia 1993 1994 1
Slovenia 1993 1993 0
Ukraine 1993 2003 10
San Marino 1995 2008 13
Montenegro 2001 2004 3
Serbia 2001 2004 3
Andorra 2002 2008 6
Armenia 2005 2006 1
Georgia 2005 2007 2
Azerbaijan 2007 2008 1
Slovakia 2011 1994 n/a
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