Are you looking forward to Eurovision this Saturday?
Yes, the Eurovision Song Contest happened last month, but this Saturday, June 6, is the biennial Eurovision Young Musicians competition.
Of course, if you go to the eurovision.com website, you’d barely know. You have to scroll down past a history of Eurovision in Bulgaria, and a graphic celebrating ’70 Years At Eurovision’, before you get to a single press release about Young Musicians. There’s nothing on the Eurovision YouTube, or Instagram, or BlueSky, although there is a mention on the separate Facebook page of the European Broadcasting Union.
Tell Us Where To Watch The Show
As the press release states, if you want to watch this contest, you have to be in one of the 11 participating countries, where it may air live or on tape delay. If you live in one of the many other EBU member countries that are not participating, like the UK, good luck finding it, because there’s no mention of it being available on any of the EBU’s YouTube channels.
Now, I get that the Song Contest team is exhausted after just coming off Vienna 2026. People deserve a break after delivering a big project. And I also get that the young musicians are young – the qualifying age range goes from slightly younger than Sandra Kim to JJ (or 12 to 21). But surely an EBU-sponsored music competition – especially a competition featuring the people who are going to produce the future live recordings of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Te Deum – deserves a bit more fanfare. After all, aren’t we supposed to be ‘United by Music’?
Exploring The Wonderful Wide World Of Music
The treatment of Eurovision Young Musicians, especially compared to Junior Eurovision, makes it seem like the EBU is only interested if we’re united by pop vocals, not other genres that might be less commercially viable. The amount of attention paid to this contest seems to be the minimum required to meet contractual obligations, and certainly nothing to build the event’s audience, let alone link it to broader messaging about how cultural events can bring diverse groups of people together.
In fact, just as Eurovision is a way to introduce different types of cultural traditions to Europe (White voice! Neomelodico! Fado! Riverdance!), the Eurovision Young Musicians competition is a chance to show that classical music isn’t all stuffy and boring – especially because this year’s interval act is dedicated to the Soviet Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian, who is responsible for bringing us bangers like this one:
Drama! Horns! A guy absolutely wailing on a drum! And all under three minutes. If it hadn’t been written in 1939, it could be a Eurovision classic. But if watching people absolutely lose themselves in playing their instruments is “too boring,” Khachaturian is also responsible for inspiring choreography such as this:
A person cannot fail to be delighted by the sight of men running around the stage with large knives. This is not exclusionary, elitist television, but programming that can appeal to everyone – if it is given the chance.
Is This Championing Public Service Broadcasting?
In fact, that’s the whole mission of public service broadcasters – to bring these types of programmes to audiences who would otherwise not have exposure to them; to showcase the best of arts and culture to communities across Europe.
The Eurovision brand is tarnished, but it still carries some credibility. People will check out a television show if it has Eurovision attached. What better way to gain back some of the goodwill Eurovision has lost, to counter the perception that it is about brand deals and monetizing the fan experience, than to return to its public service broadcasting roots and use its brand cachet to boost the profile Eurovision Young Musicians Competition?
I write this as a person who was lured in to enjoying new culture by the Eurovision branding – namely, the now-defunct Eurovision Choir of the Year competition. I came to the programme as a skeptic, thinking of choirs as something Gareth Malone put together for sentimental BBC programming. Then I saw the opening of the 2017 Eurovision Choir of the Year, with two professional musicians and a bunch of regular Europeans swaying in corny unison:
Once again, the Eurovision myth became a beautiful reality – cultures coming together to share art and music and cooperation. It’s an idea that doesn’t seem anywhere close to the reality of Eurovision today, but it still exists, just outside the shiny-ness of voting and betting odds and sponsorships.
I love what Eurovision could be. Like others, I want to challenge the EBU to make Eurovision what it should be, and what it once was for me. Competitions like Eurovision Young Musicians are a chance recreate that feeling of Europe coming together to celebrate music and culture. I just wish the EBU saw this as the opportunity as it is, rather than treat it as an afterthought of a competition.