Visit theallusionist.org/eurovision1 to listen to this episode and find out more about the topics therein
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, couldn’t escape if I wanted to, languageloo, knowing my fate is to be with you.
This episode is about the language of the Eurovision Song Contest! It doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen Eurovision, because the very concept of a near-70-year-old international multilingual televised song contest contains plenty to get your teeth into. But if you do want to get the gist, I’m sure you can find a veritable befuddlement of clips online. This is Eurovisionallusionst part one of two.
On with the show.
HZ: The Eurovision Song Contest has given us the international renown of Celine Dion, Måneskin, Dana International, Conchita Wurst and Riverdance; tear-off skirts, nul points, shiny shiny costumes, a band of babushke dancing around an onstage bread oven; not to mention fraught politics, within and between nations. And most importantly for our purposes: linguistic intrigue! So much linguistic intrigue.
DEAN VULETIC: My name is Dean Vuletic. I am a historian of contemporary Europe, and the author of the world's first scholarly study on the history of the Eurovision Song Contest.
HZ: What got you interested in Eurovision as a field of study?
DEAN VULETIC: Well, I grew up in Australia, the son of Croatian migrants, and we got to watch Eurovision already in the 1980s because of Australia's large non-English speaking - as they called us - European migrant communities. There was a special television station set up for us called SBS, which offered multilingual broadcasting. And one of the shows that it broadcast from the 1980s was indeed the Eurovision Song Contest.
HZ: Explain for those who have never had the pleasure, what the Eurovision Song Contest is.
DEAN VULETIC: The Eurovision Song Contest is one of the world's longest running television shows. It was established in 1956 as an experiment in live simultaneous transnational broadcasting. And it brings together countries which have national public service television stations that are members of the European Broadcasting Union, which is an association of national radio and television broadcasters from across Europe. And the European Broadcasting Union organizes Eurovision annually for its members. So basically what you see is songs, original songs - they have to be original according to the rules - representing countries on stage. And these countries are mostly European countries, but there are some exceptions: Israel, and most recently, Australia, for example.
HZ: Something that people whine about every year is the definition of Europe, since it includes, for the contest purposes, Australia, Israel; how is Europe defined for the contest?
DEAN VULETIC: Well, for the contest, Europe is defined according to the technical area known as the European Broadcasting Area, which was established in the interwar period at a time when national radio broadcasters from across Europe were coming together to cooperate and all to determine how to distribute radio frequencies among themselves, because the frequencies that were being used in different countries were often clashing, interfering with each other. So they really needed to cooperate to determine how they could organize the growing medium of radio across Europe.
HZ: They decided to come up with a definition of Europe based on latitude and longitude.
DEAN VULETIC: North Africa needed to be included there so that, that its radio frequencies wouldn't interfere with those of Spain or Italy or Malta. And that would go as far as Moscow, to include the European part of the Soviet Union. So it was completely a technical definition.
HZ: But why Australia, you might ask, because even with the stretchiest of technical definitions, Australia is not in Europe. Well, to celebrate Eurovision's 60th anniversary, in 2015 Australia was invited to compete as a special guest, because the song contest is such a popular TV event there. And… the special guest has stuck around, and competed nearly every year since. However, the inclusion of Australia actually fits in with the etymology of the event.
DEAN VULETIC: This term Eurovision: think about it. It's basically a synonym for Europe. So the term Europe comes from the Greek ‘eur’ meaning ‘broad’ and the ‘op’ to see. So Eurovision, with ‘vision’ being the Latin for ‘to see’, essentially means the same thing as Europe.
HZ: Oh my God.
DEAN VULETIC: Yes.
HZ: What a portmanteau!
DEAN VULETIC: Exactly.
HZ: Was that deliberate though? Or were they just saying, “We've got televisions!”
DEAN VULETIC: No, it wasn’t deliberate. Yeah, I think it just comes from television because Eurovision was the name given to the Eurovision network, which was established by the EBU in 1954 to promote the exchange of television programs among the EBU’s members. It was a name that was coined by a British journalist and then caught on to become the name of the network. You have a fresh idea of what Europe should be after the Second World War and that it needs to integrate. So then this - let's say - more unified concept of Europe also comes out in the language.
HZ: But as well as the ‘vision’ substituting for the ‘op’ component of ‘Europe’ that meant ‘see’, the ‘vision’ is there to remind you that even though it’s supposedly a singing show, looking at it is more important than listening to it. After all, it’s not a radio broadcast, is it?
DEAN VULETIC: The main motivation behind Eurovision has always been to produce a television show. So this was why it was created in the mid 1950s as an experiment in television technology. The people behind the Eurovision, the officials from the EBU in the mid-1950s thought that it would be great as an experiment in television to see if they could broadcast live and simultaneously and transnationally a common television show. So the popular music was basically just there as a way of making a television program more attractive than, let's say, if you had a script that you would then have to translate and you would have to work out ways for different audiences to understand it. Popular music was an easier way to do it: music is universal; even if you have the songs in different languages, people could still relate to the sounds, the beats. Until then, soccer had been the most successful transnational programme in the EBU’s attempts. But this was a way to try with a different format. So really, the idea of the television show is what has always been central to Eurovision and to the organizers of Eurovision. The music, the singing, is less of a priority.
HZ: I just feel like such a dupe. Just played into their hands.
HZ: Nonetheless, I’m going to prioritise the songs because the songs have to have lyrics - that’s compulsory, instrumentals are not allowed - and lyrics are made of language and language in a multilingual, international singing show is wrapped up in a whole lot of political, economic and cultural factors. The rules have changed several times regarding the languages in which a country can perform, although when the Eurovision Song Contest began in 1956, there were no language rules.
DEAN VULETIC: And it was just assumed that every country participating would want to sing in its own language in order to showcase its national culture.
HZ: Did they?
DEAN VULETIC: Yes, they did - until 1965 when the Swedish entry dared to sing in English. And that's when the language rule was introduced.
HZ: Why was it so controversial for Sweden to have sent a song in English?
DEAN VULETIC: So it was controversial simply because this hadn't been done before. No one had experimented or challenged the status quo by not singing in their national language. And the rules had until then said that Eurovision should be a stage upon which the different national cultures are promoted. But there was no distinct rule insisting that songs be in the national language of the country that the song is representing.
HZ: At the first contest there were only seven countries competing. But this number grew year after year; there were 18 competitors by 1965, when Sweden performed in English so seismically - it’s ok though, they only came tenth. The winner that year was Luxembourg, with a song written by Serge Gainsbourg, ‘Poupée de cire, poupée de son’, French for ‘wax doll, rag doll’. At that point of the Eurovision Song Contest’s existence, French had been the most popular language to perform in, and the one most likely to win.
DEAN VULETIC: Yes, because there were a lot of French speaking countries participating: of course, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Monaco, and Luxembourg - neither of which have been in Eurovision for a long time now. But there was a francophone bloc. And this also meant that, in the first 10 years of Eurovision, six of the winning entries were in French. And that also prompted some of the earliest scandals, the earliest controversies in Eurovision regarding bloc voting, because the Nordic countries especially were critical of the francophone countries for what the Nordic countries thought was bloc voting, so the francophone countries supporting each other in the voting. But actually it was more of a case of there being more French language entries in Eurovision than entries in other languages.
HZ: From almost the beginning of the Eurovision Song Contest, little bits of other languages had snuck into the songs.
DEAN VULETIC: There had been some experimentation with songs introducing some words or phrases from different languages, especially from romance languages. So already in 1957 we see the West German entry ‘Telefon, Telefon’, which used two gimmicks that became popular in Eurovision, trying to broaden the sonorous appeal of a Eurovision entry to an international audience. That song ‘Telefon, Telefon’ first of all used an international word, ‘telefon’, which can be understood by a very wide audience, an audience which doesn't even understand German. And then there were a lot of words used from other languages such as French and Italian, Spanish as well, phrases from languages that are internationally well known: ‘cheri’, ‘bonsoir’, ‘amore’, ‘amor’, words like that.
HZ: But when the rule came in from 1966 that a country's entries had to be in one of its national languages, they could no longer sneak ‘cheri’ into a German song, for example. But only until 1972, when they removed the national languages rule again.
DEAN VULETIC: One of the reasons was because the Nordic countries always felt that they were disadvantaged in Eurovision by having to sing in their national languages, which they thought did not sound too appealing to an international audience. The Finns especially went through the archives of the European Broadcasting Union and the discussions within the decision-making body of the organization regarding Eurovision, and it came out that the Nordic countries were most often the ones calling for a change to the language rule.
HZ: Another reason for removing the compulsory national languages rule was that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Eurovision was not as popular as the EBU would have liked, especially with young people.
DEAN VULETIC: And the EBU was quite concerned about this, because it basically meant that if the contest wasn't going to be watched by more young people, then its future was going to be really questioned. Already we could hear the same criticisms of Eurovision being made then as are still made now: the fact that it costs too much; it is, let's say, producing music or showcasing music that is not up to date or in tune with contemporary trends; and that the voting is rigged. So: too expensive, poor quality, and rigged voting.
HZ: Oh, not much then.
DEAN VULETIC: No, not much. And so these criticisms were coming up in the European media very often, and the EBU really thought that it needed to make Eurovision a much more modern and attractive event for it to be able to continue.
HZ: And one of their ways to do this was to ditch the rule whereby acts had to perform in one of their national languages.
DEAN VULETIC: With the implication being that more songs would be sung in English, which was at that time already the language of popular music, the international language of popular music; and also to change other rules of the contest that would allow for more modern, let's say, bands and musical instrumentation to appear on the Eurovision stage. So it was all about making Eurovision more funky, more fashionable, more of the time.
HZ: Did it work?
DEAN VULETIC: Not really, because the problem was that then, from 1973 to 1976, when the language rule was abrogated, there were three wins in the English language, which caused concern among some members of the European Broadcasting Union, because then they felt that this contest was just going to be dominated by English language songs. Of course, one of the big entries to come out in that period was Abba's ‘Waterloo’, representing Sweden in 1974, which went on to win the contest and to be the biggest ever Eurovision hit to ever come out of the contest. Until then, can you guess which was the biggest hit to have come out of Eurovision?
CLIP:
Domenico Modugno [singing]: Volare! Oh oh! Cantare!
DEAN VULETIC: Domenico Modugno singing ‘Volare’.
HZ: Oh my God, ‘Volare’!
DEAN VULETIC: ‘Volare’! Exactly.
HZ: Sorry, I know the song isn’t even called ‘Volare’, it’s called ‘Nel blu, dipinto di blu’ which roughly translates from Italian to “In the blue, painted blue”, but who’s going to remember that trippy title inspired by Marc Chagall’s paintings when you’ve got:
CLIP:
Domenico Modugno [singing]: Whoa oh oh oh!
The song didn’t win Eurovision in 1958, it came third; but it did score Billboard’s song of the year and the following year at the first ever Grammy Awards it won the award for Song of the Year. It’s still the only Eurovision song ever to win a Grammy. The song remains one of the most successful Italian-language pop hits of all time.
Anyway, after English-language songs won in 1974, 1975 and 1976, in 1977 the Eurovision Song Contest brought back the rule that it was compulsory for a country to perform its entry in one of its official national languages. Therefore only the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta were allowed to perform in English.
DEAN VULETIC: The languages winning were much more diverse. Different languages were winning the contest. It wasn't all just about the French or about the English, there was a mix going on there Hebrew, for example, in the late 1970s. Then we had also some Nordic wins: Norway, Sweden; there were some French language wins.
HZ: Between 1977 and 1991, only two winners were in English, both by Ireland. But then from 1992, things get all a bit Englishy. 1992: Ireland wins, United Kingdom comes second. 1993: Ireland wins, United Kingdom comes second. 1994: Ireland wins. 1996: Ireland wins. 1997: United Kingdom wins, Ireland comes second. 1998: United Kingdom comes second. All these songs were in English, and Malta’s English entries finished in the top ten in every one of those years too. So in 1999, the EBU got rid of the national languages rule again, because if songs in English were more likely to win, at least different countries would have a chance of winning with them. And indeed, in 1999, Sweden won with a song in the English language, ‘Take Me To Your Heaven’.
DEAN VULETIC: And so basically from the early 1990s, most of the wins have been in English. Since the abrogation of the language rule, since 1999, there have only been four entries that haven't been in English that have won: the Serbian entry ‘Молитва’ in 2007, the Portuguese entry in 2017, the Italian entry sung by Måneskin, ‘Zitti e Buoni’, in 2021 and last year's Ukrainian entry ‘Стефанія’. So English really has dominated Eurovision, both in terms of wins and in the number of entries that have been performed in English since 1999.
HZ: And Dean thinks this is a big problem for Eurovision.
DEAN VULETIC: Why? Because first of all, Eurovision is losing one of its guiding aims, to promote different cultures from across Europe. You know, that was how the contest was conceived. The second is that Eurovision isn't upholding the values of diversity that the EBU has come to attach to the contest in the last decade. Social diversity has become more of a value in Eurovision in the last decade; but linguistic diversity has been forgotten as a value. And I think this is something that Eurovision really needs to embrace again, and I think it's something that the viewing public is really embracing. So, very interestingly, even though the organizers of Eurovision, I think, in the last two decades have thought, “Let's let songs be in English because that will make the contest more popular,” what's happening now is that people are actually more attracted to Eurovision because they want to see and hear this linguistic diversity. Younger people are more exposed to different cultures and different languages, and I think that they are wanting to see a Eurovision in which this diversity is really promoted. But here again, you're getting into this tension that has historically existed in Eurovision: they don't want these national public service broadcasters just pitching an entry that might be commercially successful and hence in English. They want something of their cultures to appear on the Eurovision stage. They want some authenticity. They want a message being sent. And I think this is the new wave that we're now seeing in Eurovision, and I think it's a very hopeful and inspiring wave.
HZ: Since 1999, there have been no rules about which languages countries can perform in.
DEAN VULETIC: But that doesn't mean that we haven't had controversies regarding the languages of entries in Eurovision. We've had movements that have put pressure on the entries to be sung in the national languages. Let's say, you know, on the very rare occasions when the entries of Spain or France have not been in their national languages, there has been a political backlash, and quickly the national broadcasters have reverted back to having entries in their languages.
There are some countries in which there is really no debate about whether a song should be in any language other than the national language. So you see some countries being very consistent in this: Portugal, for example; France and Spain as I mentioned; some countries of the Balkans where the trend is for them to sing in their own languages, such as Serbia;
And then there are other countries where it is just expected that the entries will be in English: Germany, for example; the Nordic countries, not always, but most of the time. The Nordic countries still think that international audiences are not going to respond as well to their languages as they will to entries in English.
HZ: You know who else has only ever done Eurovision songs in English? The United Kingdom! Never in any of the other languages of the region, no Scots, Gaelic, Cornish, BSL, Welsh - although Welsh-language songs have at least appeared a few times at the Junior Eurovision, when Wales has participated.
DEAN VULETIC: But yeah, generally speaking, this is not something that's done, it's not a part of British cultural policy to promote this regional diversity, as much as it has been seen in French entries or even Italian entries.
HZ: I was very interested that last year France's entry was in Breton. Because France itself usually likes to promote the French language pretty hard.
DEAN VULETIC: It does. But there was a turn in the cultural politics of France in the 1990s where regional identities came to be promoted more also in the official cultural policy. And this was also reflected then in France's Eurovision entries when songs were sung in regional languages or even sung by performers who had immigrant roots from North Africa especially. So we already see this multilingual, multicultural turn in France's Eurovision entries in the 1990s.
HZ: And there've been some entries in constructed languages.
DEAN VULETIC: Yes, there have been a few and most of them were sent by Belgium.
HZ: Belgium's already got so many languages to deal with.
DEAN VULETIC: This is the problem. I think this was a way of Belgium dealing with its own linguistic politics, or at least a subtle message. And I think this is also one of the reasons why Belgian entries often tend to be performed in English, because then you just don't have this issue. Also, perhaps the Flemish might not be as confident in their language appealing to an international audience, as much as the francophone. Walloons have an advantage singing in French in this regard.
But here, the fact that we're getting more countries singing their own languages again will challenge these stereotypes of some languages not sounding as attractive or as musical as others. I can say from my personal experience watching the performance last year of the Dutch entry, in Dutch, live in the arena in which Eurovision was held, with a predominantly Italian audience, the way that the audience responded, applauded this performance in the Dutch language was inspiring. It was touching. It was such a beautiful emotional song. So I think that this idea that Germanic languages don't sound as emotional as romance ones: I think that that really doesn't fly. I think you can express a lot, a lot of different emotions as well, or a lot of different nuances, ideas in different languages. So I really think that each country should try to harness the power of its own language in Eurovision in order to do well in Eurovision.
HZ: In the next instalment of Eurovisionallusionist: dictators, protests, and Boom Bang-A-Bang Ding-a-Dong Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley.
For providing background information about the Eurovision Song Contest and recommending Dean Vuletic to me, I must thank Ewan Spence of escinsight.com, the podcast and website for all things Eurovision! He also happens to be responsible for me getting into podcasting in the first place, because in 2006 he interviewed Olly Mann for a podcast, Olly Mann thought, “This is just a guy with a recorder, I could be just a guy with a recorder!” and decided to do a podcast and asked me to make a podcast with him; Answer Me This was born, and lived for nearly fifteen yearsl and this week was reborn for a special episode which you can listen to now for all you’ve ever or never wanted to know about dogs eating snotty tissues, unkosher birds, how Danielle Steel writes seven novels per year, and checking your own semen under a microscope. It’s available at answermethispodcast.com and on the podplaces, and while you’re frequenting said podplaces, listen to the recent episode of Drunk Women Solving Crime featuring me, a teetotal gender-unsubscribed non-detective, pondering a long-ago murder on a train.
If you have any spare coins, I can turn those into independent podcast for you! Trot over to theallusionist.org/donate and in return for your donation, you get to hear all about how the podsausage is made, you get regular livestreams with chat and music and dictionaries, and you get to hang out with your fellow allusionauts in the Allusioverse Discord community, the loveliest place on the internet. This week we have been discussing vampirates in the portmanteau channel, and learning the etymology of mint julep, as well as working through some of our stresses with family members, and, I am thrilled to note, our regular dose of special spoons has evolved to include special cups! Maybe I can escalate it to special tongs next, I have at least two pairs. Anyway, join us for the good times at theallusionist.org/donate.
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is…
ruelle, noun: the space between a bed and the wall; a bed-chamber where aristocratic French women held receptions in the 17th and 18th century; a morning reception; in France, a narrow lane. [French, diminutive of ‘rue’, street.]
Try using ‘ruelle’ in an email today.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. The original music is by Martin Austwick. Happy birthday to Ashra, who does the Inwhiches at inwhiches.tumblr.com. You heard from historian Dean Vuletic, author of the book Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest, there’ll be more from Dean next episode. And with this year’s contest ramping up ahead of the final on 13 May, this is Dean’s busy period for talking about Eurovision, so you can keep up with his media appearances as well as the rest of his work at DeanVuletic.com.
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