blog post 2

Blog Post 2: The Nation on Stage

Eurovision performances have always been grand in reaching Eurovision’s goal of challenging the limits of live television broadcast and its technologies (“In a Nutshell,” 2019). However, if we look more into each country’s performances and song choice, we can find a message from its country or performer on the many concepts of diversity. Albania’s 2017 and 2018 Eurovision performances were very distinct in relation to each other in choice of song genre, message, language, and more.

As an audience like myself, analyzing Albania's Eurovision performances, we could recognize a few homogeneous and heterogeneous diversity features. Some main features included the performer, song genre, theme, wardrobe, and their voices. Albania's 2017 Eurovision performance, Lindita Halimi presented homogeneous features being yet again a female lead singer and having a similar wardrobe from performers before her. Albania has had female lead singers for the past three consecutive years before Halimi and been the public's majority pick over men in the last 13 years of its participation. In watching previous performances before Halimi, she wore a similar dress compared to the majority of the female lead singers before her. Most of them wore long dresses to their toes, with heels, and their hair down. In Albania's 2018 performance, Eugent Bushpepa also displayed homogenous factors of diversity. He presented a typical long song and continued its nations reputations of having a strong, powerful voice. On the other hand, both performers also showed heterogeneous traits of diversity in their performances. On one hand, Halimi differentiated herself by not having a typical love song and presented a song that addressed a world viewed issue. Bushpepa also uniquely presented himself by having a different song genre than Halmi. Halimi’s “World” song was categorized as soul music while Bushpepa song was linked to pop rock. He was also the first male singer to be chosen by the people of Albania in three years.

In Albania’s 2017 Eurovision performance, Lindita Halimi presented her song “Botë” or “World” in English. The song is about accepting change and differences. This message relates to both the performer herself and Albania’s view on the topic. The people of Albania displayed the message of accepting change and differences by deciding on having Halimi represent their country in the competition. Halimi is an Albanian but was born in Kosovo. This showed that the people of Albania has expressed diversity in the acceptance of differences by letting a Kosovo born Albanian represent their country.

Halimi expands the message of accepting change and connects a personal experiences of hers. She quotes that the song is more about “self-acceptance and accepting others” (“Balkan,” 2017)). People should accept others, “no matter the difference of one's ethnicities, race, religion, or sexual orientation” (“Balkan,” 2017). The most world viewed issue in accepting drastic change of our morals is accepting other sexual orientations. This has been an issue all over the world as the LGBT community continues to face hate crimes. Halimi also explains more about “Botë” and how the song  fights for human equality as in, “It is ok to be different and to not agree with topics, but it is not ok to attack, hurt, and bully others because they are not like you” (Eurovoix). She expresses this message in the lyrics “We’re so alike, yet different” and “What’s this fight all for?” (Ndr, 2017). Halimi connects a personal experience to the message of the song about how she was treated unfairly for being different in her early singing career. Although people loved her voice, they said she was too fat, which led to not being advertised and well-recognized (Ora News, 2016). As she overcame this life obstacle and helps others who faces similar situations, she proposes a solution to this issue by suggesting that spreading love can bring the world together. She sings this proposition in the line “let the love unite us all…” (Ndr, 2017). While addressing a world issue on accepting everyone despite their differences, Halimi not only named her song “World” but also advertised it as a universal message by deciding to sing her song in English so the majority of the audience could understand (Adams, 2016).

Halimi presents a grand performance that shows off extensive backgrounds, projections, and props. The background includes a torn-down brick building, clocks, and ships while the projections displayed on stage under her also shows clocks turning . One interpretation of the meaning behind the background props is that, they all represent the battles that people were facing in the past or continuing now in present social communities. The clocks turning in opposite directions of each other displays two opposing progressions in world communities. While world communities focus on the growth of their industry, they lose sight of how the social community is advancing in the opposite direction. Therefore, the clock on stage turning one way may represent the industrial growth while the other clock turning the other way represents the declining social community progress. The ships emphasizes those representations by showing the disconnection between the growth and decline of communities and how people are lost in their sight of futures. Along with the productions of the background images, props, and projections, their were also the use of color lightings on stage.

The lighting colors that were used on stage were blue and gold. The blue lighting lights up the stage for most of Halimi’s performance to describe its Albanian meaning of warding off evil signs. The stage lighting changes to yellow/gold towards the end of the performance while singing the chorus for the last few times. I suspect Halimi’s use of this color on stage is to portray the mourning vibe of the color and ends with it in hopes to end the mourning period in world communities by spreading love and acceptance (Kroulek, 2016). The mourning vibe that the color yellow/gold is used for, also represents mourning experiences that people of different backgrounds faced with the ultimate message to keep looking for a positive future. Halimi also wore a white dress that in worldview cultures, especially in Islam, reflects the idea of universal peace and harmony (Kroulek, 2016) (Bakar, 2018). She wants to show that her proposal of love can bring peace to the world while working together.

The next year, Albania sent its first male lead singer in three years, Eugent Bushpepa, and his band. Although it was a change for Albania to send a male lead singer, who is Albanian-born, he still upheld the country’s reputation of having a strong, powerful voice that was well-liked and popular among the audience. The only concern Bushpepa and his band had to worry about was if they could pull off his performance to make it to the finals or even further - win the competition.

The song choice Bushpepa and Albania agreed to present was Bushpepa’s own song called “Mall” or “Yearning”. Bushpepa’s love song was about his nostalgic feelings for a special someone indicated in the lyric “This Yearning for years” (“Eugent Bushpepa,” 2019). He also shows how much he cherishes the memories and love they had in the lyric “That thrills and sears,” but then brings pain to his heart because he cannot be with her (“Eugent Bushpepa,” 2019). The lyric “This yearning burns knows no distance, no bounds in this world” clearly states his narrative in his song that he longs for his other half in their long-distance relationship while he is on tour (“Eugent Bushpepa,” 2019). Another lyric showing his pain, wishing his loved one would visit to soothe his pain is in the lines of “Find your way out, to soothe my soul, Just for one day make this pain subside... Then at last pain will fade away” (“Eugent Bushpepa,” 2019). Lastly, the lyrics “Where dreams are divine, and they bring peace of mind to see, the vision of her… weaving a vision of you, though it is just a fantasy… Fade away” indicates the only thing he has of her are these visions to satisfy his pain for short moments until they disappear when he comes back to reality (“Eugent Bushpepa,” 2019).

While Hamili’s performance was focused more on her background images and props, Bushpepa was more focused on his band, his expressions/gestures, the camera work, and stage lighting. The camera work showed various angles of the guitarists and drummer while Bushpepa’s singing paused and then back on Bushpepa when he continued to sing. Close-up shots were then used when he sang his powerful notes and showed his facial expressions of yearning emotions to represent the lyrics he sang in Albanian. The use of dim lights and shadows made the performance more dramatic in connecting to the emotion of yearning. The rare bright moments of dramatic lighting helped focus on Bushpepa and his voice. For example, the most stood out spotlight was towards the end of the song while he was singing his big note saying, “I’ll give my life to you.” The use of the spotlight on this lyrics, highlights the emotions of how much he would give up of his life for the love and yearning of his loved one and to highlight his voice. Other lightings in color frequently included red, blue, and black (shadows). The performance starts off with a blue lighting color signifying melancholic emotions to help portray the theme and emotions that are in the song to the audience. The use of the blue lighting continues through most of the song, mostly during verses. This could help show the reason why Bushpepa sings in his national language, instead of English. Both, signify the compassion of his emotions represented in the theme of the song Bushpepa sings of yearning.The dim red and black shadowy colors efficiently present the country’s national colors shown in their flag. This use of the dim red color are used to show his emotion of his intense love, desire, and longing for his loved one (Bourn, 2011). In the Islamic culture, the black shadowy color that was shown with the dim red color also represents suffering, which is well displayed to match one of the emotions in the song (Bakar, 2018). The red lighting is then shined more boldly by itself when the first chorus is sung, portraying overbearing emotions and behaviors of rage, anger, and stress to represent how much his passionate love is driving him crazy (Bourn, 2011). As the chorus is sung for the second time, towards the end of the song, all three colors are being transitioned between each other to pour out all of his different emotions he is feeling in this song. Lastly, the wardrobe worn by the performers were black leather to represent the rock genre they associate themselves with.

Word Count:1783

    Works Cited

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