Welcome to another round-up of Eurovision news in the latest ESC Insight Newsletter. Read the headlines and the juicy news inside them by clicking on this link.
We cross in this week’s edition from highs in Tallinn with an exciting line up for Eesti Laul to more tepid news from Turkey who seem to be out this year. We review the last two songs in Junior Eurovision as well where we will all be heading to next week.
Our regular Newsletter column, Robertson’s Reflection, takes a swing at one of the differences between the Eurovision Song Contest and Junior Eurovision, the rule about singing in your national language. He argues why Junior Eurovision should scrap this archaic legislation this week:
The modern world throws up an ever-growing list of children in all kinds of flexible environments, away from or without a set place called home. They are extremely resilient, often battling to keep up with four or five different languages in their life. I see this where I work with over 40 languages being spoken across a student base of 550. Junior Eurovision rules mean that you need to sing in an official language of your country, which for many means that the minority and immigrant languages of nations couldn’t be represented. If this rule was used to make it less stressful and less scary for young people then surely the rule should be that children can sing in their own first language, not the increasingly arbitrary one of where you are from. Look through Melodifestivalen’s history in Sweden with songs qualifying in Greek and Bosnian for examples of allowing people to bring their culture up to perform. That should be more possible to do in Junior Eurovision, not less.
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Is the argument really “Kids around Europe don’t have pride in their national languages, so why should JESC?”
Forcing the use of home languages feels more and more forced each year I watch Junior Eurovision, as the ages of contestants rises to become a more teen-friendly show some things need to give to match how teenagers are.
The argument here is that the language rule makes the inclusion of young people, as well as the competition itself, less strong rather than stronger.