Oh, you thought the Eurovision Song Contest was about songs? Or a fun international TV event that brings people together in lots of different countries? Or watching extremely vigorous dance numbers? OK, it is, but it's also about some pretty thorny language-related politics. Historian Dean Vuletic, author of Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest, discusses Eurovision's many linguistic controversies, and the ways the contest has been exploited politically - and caused political kick-offs too. This is the second instalment of a two-part Eurovisionallusionist. In the first part: a whole lot of tussling about which languages to compete in. Find out more about this episode at theallusionist.org/eurovision2, where there's also a transcript. The Allusionist's online home is theallusionist.org. Stay in touch at facebook.com/allusionistshow,instagram.com/allusionistshow, youtube.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/allusionistshow. Support the show at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you also get glimpses into how the podsausage is made, regular livestreams, AND membership of the delightful Allusioverse Discord community with whom I will be watching the Eurovision final on 13 May - join us! The Allusionist is produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Martin Austwick provides the original music. Hear Martin’s own songs via PaleBirdMusic.com. Support the show: http://patreon.com/allusionist See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is the illusionist in which I Helen Zaltzman award language douz point this is the second half of our two part excursion into the language of the Eurovision Song Contest, whose bespangled all singing some dancing surface belies the linguistic squabbles, politicking, and upsets beneath.
You don't even have to have seen the contest before for this podcast to be a worthwhile use of your time, but do treat yourself to some online clips of the eurovisionary greats.
The final of the 2023 contest is May 13, and why don't you watch it with me and your fellow illusionauts.
We'll be gathered in the illusion verse discord to chat throughout, and it'll be lovely to have you along.
Join us@theillusionist.org donate on with the show previously on the Eurovision Allusionist in 1956, the European Broadcasting Union, or EBU, a body made up of state broadcasters of various different european countries, started the annual televisual event, the Eurovision Song Contest, in which each competing country performs an original song and the rules have changed.
Many times countries had to perform in one of their official national languages, then countries could perform in any language.
Then too many were choosing English.
So the rule was restored that countries had to perform in their official national languages.
Then english language songs kept winning in the 1990s, so the compulsory national language rule was taken away again.
And now countries can perform in whichever language they like, but that is still often English.
It's very interesting to see what they chose in the past and what they choose now.
Was it a disadvantage if you only had one national language less choice?
I wouldn't say it was a disadvantage.
I would say that countries which have multiple national languages, such as Switzerland and Belgium, they would tend to go for the romance languages.
So Italian and French in their cases.
But we can see that in recent years these countries have tended to go for English as sort of a compromise language among the different national groups, as.
In Eurovision allusionist part one we are joined by historian dean Vulatic, author of postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest, the world's first scholarly study on the history of the Eurovision Song Contest.
The choice of which national language to use, if you had multiple, could be very politically heated.
Definitely when we look at a country like Yugoslavia, which had Serbo Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian as its official languages, generally the variant that was opted for was Serbo Croatian, and especially its croatian standardization, because that was the center of the popular music industry in Yugoslavia, Albanian, for example, even though it was the main language in Kosovo and was represented in Yugoslavia's national selections for Eurovision, never managed to make it through, nor did Macedonian, even though Macedonian was an official language of Yugoslavia at the time.
So there was a lot of political controversy surrounding the domination of croatian entries in the 1980s, especially when the federation began to disintegrate in the early 1990s.