«Eurovision»: Seeing Romanis in Arts and Outside of Arts

The Eurovision song competition is now over. We are happy about this year’s success of Ukraine. And we now want to discuss possibilities offered by this musical competition—not just to artists but to diverse social groups.

The Eurovision Music Contest is always rife with scandals, plagiarism charges etc. These are always controversial participants and polar views by viewers. Despite the openly declared apolitical and neutral stance, the Eurovision is a place where participants are looking for a possibility to voice important problems and draw the attention to important events.

That said, the ethnic diversity is indeed amazing, every single time. Not always do indigenous ethnicities draw the attention of the people of their own country. And the performances never fail. So, let us draw your attention to the fact how are Romanis represented at this competition. Spoiler: in a bright manner. But has everyone indeed noticed that?

The Romanis on stage: which countries did they represent?

As Romanis do not have a country of their own, they were representing different countries—preserving their ethnic identity in any case.

In 2017, at the Eurovision in Kyiv, Hungary was represented by
Joci Pápai with his ethnic song entitled Origo. He performed his song with an ethnic Romani dance and got the 8^th place.

Let us take a look at the lady dancer’s costume. Where are then those acidic and hard-to-combine colours we are accustomed to on our stage? So it turns out that our stereotypic images of Romanis and their traditional attire are distorted, imposed from outside? That would be a rhetorical question. 

The same artist represented Hungary for the second time in 2017 with his song entitled Az én apám. He did not, however, qualify into the final.

Joci Pápai is a European Romani. He was born into a large family. His father and his elder brother were into music—so Joci, too, started playing musical instruments as early as at the age of 4.

In 2013, Macedonia was represented by Vlatno Rozanoski and Esma Redžepova.

Esma has been engaged in creative activities since the age of 14. One of her songs became a soundtrack in the Borat movie. The US National Public Radio listed her as one of the 50 Great Voices of the World. For the duration of her stage career, she has performed over 9,000 times in 30 different countries around the world. Together with her husband, she used to teach kids music. Esma has received numerous awards for her charity activities. According to her own estimate, she has created over 500 creative works.

But what if Esma had been oppressed due to her ethnic background? Could she have been as successful then?

Back to the year 2009. Czech Republic sends the Gipsy.cz to Eurovision. This band mixes pop music, rap, hip hop, traditional Romani music, jazz, and Balkan brass band. The band became famous after their single entitled Romano Hip Hop. They had a number of awards; they became the Discovery of the Year in Czechia, found themselves on the 11^th place in the World Music Charts Europe, and went on tour in 30 countries.

Unfortunately, these performers have failed to advance into the final. Not in the least does this, however, diminish their achievements and their talent.

Romanis had been represented at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, too. The very first edition of this competition took place in 2003. Then, Latvia was represented by Dzintars Čīča. The artist then took a bit of a break in his creative activities, but came back this year as he toured all across Latvia.

Now let us have a minute of sarcasm. So, Latvia was not afraid to roll out a Roma guy for its  debut performance? Well that is an absurd question, is it not? After all, talent is not ethnicity-bound. Nothing is ethnicity-bound. All of the lame prejudice conceptions and stereotypes are but archaisms built on fear and lack of understanding.   

Acceptance and support allow us to enrich any society. Be it arts, jurisprudence, medicine, pedagogics, social sphere, Romanis are specialists, just as good as others. Let us reiterate: ethnicity does not stipulate talent and abilities.

We have the reconstruction of Ukraine ahead of us. So let us restore it and make it free—free from stigma and discrimination, too.