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May 15

Eurovision: the winner

Posted on Sunday, May 15, 2011 by Paul in Music

Well, that was one I didn’t see coming.  The 2011 contest winner is an 80s-style duet from Azerbaijan – admittedly one with a decent chorus.  I wouldn’t have picked this as a standout, but I suppose it didn’t have much competition in its genre, which is always a help.

The contest actually credits the act as “Ell & Nikki”, but their names are Eldar Gasimov and Nigar Jamal.  Ms Jamal is an ex-pat living in London.  Azerbaijan only started entering in 2008, but they’ve made the top 10 every year since, so perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised by this.

Countries like Azerbaijan take winning the Eurovision seriously, and not without good reason.  They’re well aware that the rest of Europe doesn’t pay them much attention, couldn’t place them on a map, and vaguely suspects they’d be a poor choice of holiday destination.  But as winners of Eurovision 2011, they get to host the 2012 show.  That’s great publicity.  (For an illustration of this attitude, see the excellent documentary Sounds Like Teen Spirit about the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, and the segments about the girl from Georgia.  It’s on Netflix.)

Technically, they’ll put on a perfectly decent show.  The real question is whether they’ll screw it up with bad publicity from their human rights record.  This is, after all, a country where people are still jailed for mocking the President.  There is certainly a risk that they won’t get on well with the travelling retinue of Eurovision fans.  Of course, there’s also the possibility that a bit of international attention will encourage the authorities to get their act together; they’ll certainly have to relax their visa rules, which would currently prevent the Armenian entry from showing up at all.

Bring on the comments

  1. Ralf Haring says:

    fyi, the documentary is unfortunately one of those dvds on netflix where the availability date is unknown

  2. Charles Knight says:

    Eurovision was very dull this year, way too much slick corporate pop and bland performers, way too few people singing about Genghis Khan and backing dancers dressed in tinfoil Nazi youth uniforms.

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