Sunday 15 May 2011

Politics and Music

As everyone who reads my scribblings knows, I am not 'into' music. I do, however, enjoy musicals and theatrical experiences and last night, having heard that Terry, oops sorry, Sir Terry Wogan, was no longer presiding over the Eurovision Song Contest I thought I would give it a few minutes of my life as I nibbled my dinner. (I know, I shouldn't sit hunched over a tray in the lounge, bad for digestion and all that jazz, but...)

Perhaps I should explain further about Terry before millions of you descend upon me. I thought he was the greatest radio presenter of them all, by far, it's just that I never really liked to watch him on TV and I didn't like the carping sarcasm when he covered the Eurovision stuff. If he really didn't like it, why did he take the money to cover it and then drag it down into a joke?

Whatever. I thought Dusseldorf did a great job of staging the contest. Sure, there were parts of it that were not to my taste, but then, I was watching differing cultures on my screen and at the very least I thought they were interesting. Certainly it made a nice change from the constant stream of cookery programmes.

Coming from outside the music business gives you a different outlook. Every singer in the contest (and it's supposed to be for the SONG) had dancers leaping about and a zillion lighting effects. I guess that must be for the 'vision' part of Eurovision but it did detract from the SONG.

Furthermore when it came to the 'judging' and the results something was GLARINGLY obvious. Countries voted for other countries within their regions or political areas and rarely gave a vote, or at best a low scoring vote, to those countries not in their area.

Surely, as this has been going on for years, the organisers must be aware of this and could take a major step to make the voting more balanced? At the moment you are not allowed to vote for your own country so why not extend that? Look at the history of the voting and the 'zones' leap off the screen. Daniels new rule would be that the organisers create zones, Scandinavian, Baltic, and so on, and you are not allowed to vote for anyone in your zone....

It was also politically interesting to see the AV system in operation, taking people to the top who didn't get the most top votes, just the most second and third votes. Hmmmm.....

p.s. I enjoyed most of them, thought Blue did a good job, liked Italy...

4 comments:

stephend said...

Of course the UK are guilty of the neighbourhood voting as well, giving Ireland 12 points.

Joyce said...

Sorry stephend but people in the UK voted for Ireland because whether we like them or not Jedward always give their all and obviously love what they are doing.(ps I loved Italy's song too)

Sage said...

I said the same thing to my daughter last night. The best idea would be to have a veil of secrecy and all entrants to be anonymous...ok people may guess who each entrant is, but if you know the songs only as Song 1, Song 2 etc there may be less political voting.

I LOVE Eurovision, I watch it every year, but the politics really detracts from what is supposed to be a contest that the majority of Europe take seriously. I know we dont, but many countries take it REALLY seriously.

There were less "out there" entries last night...apart from the flying gnomes, but it wasnt too bad. I think Blues mic needed checking though, at times Lee could hardly be heard.

Shame Jedward didnt win...I thought they brough enthusiasm and energy to what could have been a really boring night

Pete Biro said...

Ali Bongo and I judged FISM competitions s few times and had to fight to convince some of the judges to NOT just automatically give their countrymen high marks. It seems to go on everywhere, sadly.