Pride, Prejudice and the Eurovision Song Contest

The most popular European music contest Eurovision was held last month. Obviously conducted for a Pan-European music extravaganza, some countries in the Caucasus, Middle East and North Africa are also take part. Each country sends its competing song that will be performed live on television by the artist(s). The winner is announced by tele-voting in which viewers from participating countries can vote their favorite.

Eurovision 2010’s winner is the German entry ‘Satellite’ by Lena Meyer-Landrut. But I am completely shocked by the results, since I was hoping that the Azerbaijani entry to the contest, ‘Drip Drop’ by Safura will garner the coveted prize this year. Safura’s on-stage performance singing the song ‘Drip Drop’ managed to get only the 5th place.

‘Satellite’ is just an ordinary song when compared with ‘Drip Drop’. Lena has no formal vocal training, yet she managed to deliver a superb performance. Safura, the Caucasian beauty not only gives life to her words by singing so awesomely but also gives a unique beauty that Lena misses to give. Lena’s way of singing is a happy-go-lucky i-don’t-care-what-emotions-are type. She sounds like an over-enthusiastic school girl mimicking a famous pop song. Yet the song is enjoyable.

‘Drip Drop’ is an emotion-heavy song. Safura puts all her energy into her voice to bring out the agony of a girl who recently had a breakup. It is really a touching rendition that goes straight into the heart and stays put there. It sort of leaves a pain in there. I believe such a song that really makes an impact is the best one rather than the ill-judged winner ‘Satellite’.

Since this a televised song contest, people are let to vote and choose their favorite song based on popularity. The countries that have given ‘Safura’ the most points are from Eastern Europe and Caucasus. Countries in the mainland Europe favored Lena’s attempt at singing a jolly song. What could be the reason behind such widespread negligence of a superb song? Is it the European mentality that is reluctant to leave the title of Europe’s most liked music artist to a Caucasian Islamic girl? It is certainly not the lack of musical knowledge that makes them refuse to appreciate good music. Or is it a petty reason like lack of promotion of the song among western, northern and southern European audience that became advantage to songs like ‘Satellite’. The only reason that I could frame is that majority of Europeans are not ready to accept a foreign entity at the expense of their national pride. When such an international music contest is conducted, Europeans must open up a bit to accept foreign talent.

Azerbaijan debuted in the Eurovision song contest in 2008, when it was placed in 8th in the final voting. In 2009, Aysel & Arash’s peppy number ‘Always’ managed to get 3rd place. Then it was impossible to win the contest because of Norway’s Alexander Rybak’s blissful performance of ‘Fairy Tale’ with all that awesome violin skills. There could not be a more convincing performance than that. But this time it seems that a biased judgement is given by Europeans. Only because a German girl is able to deliver a good performance, they decided to dump a much better Safura.

Azerbaijan has got a lot of talented people in the music scene. Safura, Aysel, Arash and the lesser known Irada are superb singers. Anyways, even including a not so European country like Azerbaijan in the contest and helping artists like Safura, Aysel & Arash get their part of worldwide attention through the Eurovision platform is a great thing. So I will restrain from anymore Europe bashing and listen to the music. Drip Drop…. Drip Drop….