Ukraine’s support for Azerbaijan’s victory

After Ukraine in 2004 and Russia in 2008, Azerbaijan became the third post-Soviet country to win the international song contest Eurovision [aside from Estonia and Latvia, which won in 2001 and 2002, respectively – Ed.], and hence got the right to host the next contest. The votes of the juries and audiences in 43 countries conferred a total of 221 points to Ell and Nikki – a duet of “Europeanized” lovers. Thus, owing to Eldar Gasimov and Nigar Jamal, the 57th song contest Eurovision-2012 will be held on the Caspian coast, in Baku. Eurovision has never gone so far east before. Rumors have it that the Ukrainian winner of Eurovision Ruslana and her husband, producer Oleksandr Ksenofontov, were involved in the preparation of the Azerbaijani performers. While attempting to find a confirmation of this information, The Day found out that not separate individuals but the Ukrainian company Euromedia Consulting (that once “accompanied” Ruslana) acts every year as a co-producer for Azerbaijani performers.

As Andrii Babkin, creative manager of the company, told The Day, Euromedia Consulting has been providing services for Azerbaijan since 2008, when this country sent its singers to Eurovision for the first time.

“Ukraine, in the form of the company Euromedia, was really involved in co-producing the Eurovision-2011 participants from Azerbaijan,” Babkin told The Day. “The company participated in the song selection for the performers, the production of the song, and the song itself was written by Swedish authors at the request of the Azerbaijani party together with the Ukrainian company Euromedia. These were the same authors who wrote the song for the Azerbaijani performer last year, who took the fifth place in the contest. The Ukrai-nian party also participated in the performers’ preparation for the contest, namely in the organization of vocal, choreographic and artistic turns, costume selection, work with psychologists, work with consultants on Eurovision, and preparing the artists’ understanding of what this contest actually is. Our company has worked on the Eurovision theme since 2003. In 2003 the company director Pavlo Hrytsak was the head of the Ukrainian delegation to Eurovision. In 2004 we worked for Ruslana. In 2005 Pavlo Hrytsak was the vice president of the National Television Company of Ukraine, executive director of Eurovision in Ukraine — in that year he founded the company Euromedia, which has been working with Azerbaijan as a consultant and co-producer since 2008. We were also involved in the European promotion campaign of the Azerbaijani singers, their stay in Duesseldorf, all their interviews, press conferences and rehearsals. We were also directly engaged in the initiation of Azerbaijan’s participation in Eurovision, in particular, we negotiated with the European Broadcasting Union.”

So you had nothing to do with the preparation of Mika Newton?

“No, we didn’t. Another company did it. Eurovision is a contest of television channels, officially and legally not countries but television channels representing different countries participate in the contest. And it is the television channel that is responsible for picking the delegation, the contractors, the preparation and so on.”

Babkin also pointed out that the company plans to continue its cooperation with Azerbaijan.

The Eurovision victory cost Azerbaijan a lot. As a source informed The Day, Azerbaijan spent around 50 million dollars on the preparation of its participants over the last three years. It’s quite an expensive treat.

Meanwhile, bookies who predicted the victory of either the Frenchman with an opera voice or the British boy band Blue failed once again. The winners’ names were a surprise. The Ukrainian Oksana Hrytsai (stage name – Mika Newton) had been expected to take the 23rd place, though she actually took the fourth.

“I think there are several factors,” said the head of the European Association of Ukrainians Oleksii Tolkachov, who watched this year’s Eurovision competition in Duesseldorf. “First, there was a very successful job by the producer. Second, the promotion campaign in Europe, organized by a big consulting company was a great success. The Ukrainians living abroad were mobilized. However, I still have questions concerning Spain, Italy and Poland. Ukrainians from abroad phoned me and said that they were outraged by the low marks these countries gave to the Ukrainian singer as a result. Perhaps, the national jurors have influenced the final result.”

Neither foreign, nor Ukrainian bookmakers could foresee Mika Newton’s success. Aside from the author of the song Angel, none of the music experts, composers, poets, producers, performers who took part in the discussion on the First National Channel on the eve of the Eurovision final, thought Europe would highly assess Mika’s performance. On the whole, during the abovementioned discussion the atmosphere in the studio was quite tense and unsympathetic, and at times rude expressions were used. Yet a couple of interesting opinions were expressed, specifically, Yurii Rybchynsky reminded people of the political component of Eurovision.

Of course, such a large-scale television competition with its multi-million European audience could not emerge without any political background. It was founded in the mid-1950s as an entertainment event that would help unite Europe. During its over 50-year-long history the competition has suffered many transformations, but its goal of uniting cultures has remained unchanged. In this sense today’s ideological values grow more acute, because Europe is going through difficult times. Is the gla-mour of Eurovision able to soothe the growing tensions? The emotional words about cultural unity sound too Utopian, when a whole range of fundamental historical and cultural contradictions remain unresolved (and The Day of Commemoration of the Victims of Political Repressions marked The Day after the Eurovision showed this clearly). Moreover, political and mercenary interests prevail over the fundamental values.

Are several Eurovision evenings able to mend the cracks in the European community, or vice versa, does the competition reflect the European crisis? As it turned out, our doubts mirrored those of Tolkachov, who watched the show at the Esprit Arena.

Sharing his emotions, Oleksii said, “For me Eurovision consists of two parts, the first part being the performance of the singers, which really works to unite the audience and make it live to the beat of a single heart, when people can just feel one another. But as soon as the voting starts, this entire community breaks into separate hostile camps. No unity, only jealousy, hate, and some local ill will. There were many negative reactions, a lot of booing at the stadium, when certain countries gave their votes for Greece, Sweden, or Azerbaijan, for that matter…

“Frankly, a part of the audience kept booing during the voting for Mika Newton. The voting was smothered in an atmosphere of morbid competition, a lot of Russians were displeased when Ukraine got high scores, or when Moldova wouldn’t award high points to their Aleksei Vorobiov…

“Moreover, personally I find the character and voting system totally obscure. The audience was utterly indignant about the voting of small countries, since the points awarded by Monaco or Macedonia are equal to those awarded by France, Germany, Italy, or Spain. The value of the votes of various countries is the same, despite the fact that they belong to different ‘weight categories.’ During the voting itself I understood that the viewers’ opinion makes up only 50 percent of the result, while the other 50 percent comes from some obscure national juries, whose composition is hardly known to anyone, just like the way they actually vote.” (The NTCU press service informed us that the Ukrainian jury consisted of deputy director general of the NTCU Volodymyr Lypovy, film director Andrei Benkendorf, director of Kiss FM Anton Tseslyk, singer Masha Sobko, and vocals instructor Natalia Yefymenko. – Author).

How does the atmosphere of enmity, even hate, relate to a cultural reunion? Where should one look for the roots of these problems? How should they be solved? Apparently, this is not the kind of question to be addressed to the masterminds or participants of a pop contest, even one as large as this. But this way or another, Eurovision has sent a clear message to say that these problems do exist and need solving.