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Ukraine's Eurovision entry takes aim at Russian oppression Ukraine's Eurovision entry takes aim at Russian oppression
(about 17 hours later)
Ukrainians have chosen a Crimean Tatar singer and her song about the mass deportation of Tatars under Josef Stalin as the country’s entry for this year’s Eurovision song contest. Last year’s Ukraine entry to the Eurovision song contest was a jolly, forgettable pop song called Tick Tock in which Mariya Yaremchuk urged her lover to “kiss and kiss me till I drop”. This year’s is, it’s fair to say, something of a gear change.
On Sunday Ukraine chose a song about Joseph Stalin’s mass deportation in 1944 of about 240,000 Crimean Tatars, a horrific chapter that the nation’s parliament has described as tantamount to genocide.
Susana Jamaladinova, who performs under the stage name Jamala, was chosen on Sunday night by the combined votes of a three-person jury and 380,000 votes from viewers watching the televised final round.Susana Jamaladinova, who performs under the stage name Jamala, was chosen on Sunday night by the combined votes of a three-person jury and 380,000 votes from viewers watching the televised final round.
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Her song, 1944, refers to the year in which Stalin uprooted Tatars from their homeland and shipped them in badly overcrowded trains to Central Asia. Thousands died during the journey or starved to death on the barren steppes after they arrived. They were not allowed to return to Crimea until the 1980s. The 32-year-old singer is herself a Crimean Tatar and has spoken of the importance of people knowing about the deportations. “The main message is to remember and to know this story,” she said. “When we know, we prevent.”
The song is a peculiar combination of a mid-tempo pop confection and anguished lyrics. “When strangers are coming, they come to your house, they kill you all and say ‘We’re not guilty’,” the song begins. Her song opens with the uncompromising lyrics: “When strangers are coming. They come to your house, they kill you all and say: ‘We’re not guilty … not guilty’.”
“That terrible year changed forever the life of one fragile woman, my great-grandmother Nazylkhan. Her life was never the same,” Jamaladinova, who was born in Kyrgyzstan, said before the broadcast. Jamala’s great-grandmother was deported along with her four sons and one daughter. “This song really is about my family,” Jamala said. “I had to write it. It is a memorial song and it is difficult for me to sing it.”
The song lyrics do not touch on Russia’s annexation of Crimea two years ago, but entering the singer in the hugely popular song contest could raise the issue by implication. Crimean Tatars, who are a Turkic and mostly Muslim ethnic group, say oppression against them has increased since Russia annexed the peninsula. Stalin’s government had accused Tatars of collaborating with Nazi forces who occupied the Crimean peninsula and in 1944 forcibly moved them from their homes to central Asia and other more remote parts of the USSR. Between 20% and 50% of the deportees died within the first two years of exile.
“There is no mention there about occupation or other outrages that the occupants are doing in our motherland; nevertheless it touches on the issue of indigenous people who have undergone horrible iniquities,” said Mustafa Jamilev, leader of the Crimean Tatars. But the song also feeds into contemporary geopolitical tensions, with Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 still fresh in people’s memories.
Eurovision rules prohibit songs with lyrics seen as having political content. In 2009, less than a year after Georgia and Russia fought a brief war, the competition disallowed Georgia’s proposed entrant because the group’s song lampooned Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukraine’s 2005 entrant Green Jolly was told to rework the lyrics of its song, Razom Nas Bahato, which was an anthem of the previous year’s Orange Revolution protests. One of the judges who chose Jamala’s song, the singer Rouslana, said the song “is precisely what we are all suffering in Ukraine today”.
The Eurovision final round with competitors from around the continent takes place in May in Stockholm. Overtly political songs are not allowed in a contest best known for its kitsch, dodgy power ballads and bizarre gimmicks, not least Russia’s “Buranovo grannies”, who competed in 2012.
A spokesman for the contest said a decision on whether to allow the Ukraine song would be made by the European Broadcasting Union’s reference group after 14 March, the deadline for all the songs to be submitted.
“It is decided on a case-by-case basis,” he said. “Explicit political messages are not allowed in the songs, nor should they bring the contest into disrepute or have any commercial messages.”
If a song is judged to break the rules, the competing country might be asked to change the lyrics or the song itself.
In 2009 Georgia was asked to change the lyrics of its obviously anti-Putin song, We Don’t Wanna Put In. They refused and were disqualified from the competition.
In 2005, the Ukraine entry was deemed too political with its references to the then president Viktor Yuschenko. They were asked to change the lyrics, which they did.
This year’s contest will be held in Stockholm on 14 May. Organisers have promised the biggest voting changes since 1975, with the votes of a professional jury presented separately to the public vote.
That effectively means viewers will not know who has won until the very end, rather than having 20 minutes where it is obvious who has won while the nation-by-nation vote-gathering trundles on.
Britain will be hoping to better its 24th position last year when Electro Velvet performed the jazz swing tune Still In Love With You. That at least was one better than Englebert Humperdinck’s 25th in 2012, and a runaway triumph compared to Jemini’s out of tune nul-points effort Cry Baby in 2003.
The public will choose the British entry in an X Factor-style live competition on BBC4 on 26 February.