A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song ContestIvan Raykoff, Robert Deam Tobin The world's largest and longest-running song competition, the Eurovision Song Contest is a significant and extremely popular media event throughout the continent and abroad. The contest is broadcast live in over 30 countries with over 100 million viewers annually. Established in 1956 as a televised spectacle to unify postwar Western Europe through music, the contest features singers who represent a participating nation with a new popular song. Viewers vote by phone for their favourite performance, though they cannot vote for their own country's entry. This process alone reveals much about national identities and identifications, as voting patterns expose deep-seated alliances and animosities among participating countries. Here, an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplines, including musicology, communications, history, sociology, English and German studies, explore how the contest sheds light on issues of European politics, national and European identity, race, gender and sexuality, and the aesthetics of camp. For some countries, participation in Eurovision has been simultaneously an assertion of modernity and a claim to membership in Europe and the West.Eurovision is sometimes regarded as a low-brow camp spectacle of little aesthetic or intellectual value. The essays in this collection often contradict this assumption, demonstrating that the contest has actually been a significant force and forecaster for social, cultural and political transformations in postwar Europe. |
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Accessed 15 album American Arab artists audience band Bernd Meinunger broadcast camp celebrated chanson citizenship competition composer Croatia Cyprus Dana International Dschinghis Khan Dutch East English English-language entry Estonia ethnic Europe European countries European Union Eurovision Song Contest Eurovision's event example fans February Feddersen Festival Finland Finnish French gender genres Germany global Ibid interviews Israeli Japan Japanese Karazon Katina and Volkova language lesbian Lithuanian Mamontovas melodramatic Milly Scott modern music styles national identity national preliminary Netherlands new-Dutch participants performance political pop music popular music queer radio Ralph Siegel Red and White represented role Russian sang Schlager sense Serbia Sertab's sexual shame Siegel singer singing Skamp Soviet success Sue & Marc SuperStar Swedish Swiss Switzerland television televoting Turkey Turkey's Turkish victory viewers voting West European Western winner winning World Idol Yugoslav Yugoslavia Zagreb