A History of Modern Europe Through the World's Greatest Song Contest
E-Book, Englisch, 356 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-911545-00-2
Verlag: Melville House UK
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Wasserzeichen (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
Do you think the world of the Eurovision Song Contest, with its crazy props, even crazier dancers, and crazier still songs has nothing to do with serious European politics? Think again. The contest has been a mirror for cultural, social, and political developments in Europe ever since its inauguration, when an audience in dinner jackets and ball gowns politely applauded each song. It has been a voice of rebellion across the Iron Curtain, an inspiration for new European nations in the 1990s and 2000s, the voice of liberation for both sexual and regional minorities. It even once triggered a national revolution.
Eurovision! charts both the history of Europe and the history of the Eurovision Song Contest over the last six decades, and shows how seamlessly they interlink — and what an amazing journey it has been.
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1968
Date: 6 April Venue: Albert Hall, London, UK Winner: Massiel, Spain Winning Song: ‘La, La, La’ The story of the 1968 winner is bizarre, even by Eurovision standards. Massiel, a yé-yé star, was not the first choice for the role. The verses – which, unlike the chorus that gave the song its title, had proper words – were originally to be sung in Catalan by Joan Manuel Serrat. Serrat was a leading performer in the Catalan Nova Cançó style – songs in the north-eastern language, often critical of the Madrid government. General Franco, who just about tolerated Nova Cançó at home, would not allow such subversive regionalists to represent the country abroad, and insisted the song be sung in Castilian, the official Spanish language. Serrat refused, and Massiel was brought in at the last moment. The irony that a row should take place about the language a song called ‘La, La, La’ should be sung in is delightfully Eurovision, with its apparent triviality but, behind that, the serious issue of a nation’s politics and identity. There is also a perpetually humming rumour that Franco bribed juries to vote for the song. This has been strenuously denied, but who knows the truth? ‘La, La, La’ is cheerful and catchy, and most of the other entries were mediocre (‘Stress’ by Norway’s Odd Børre was a quirky exception, but hardly winner material). Perhaps Massiel won because she deserved to. ‘La, La, La’ didn’t exactly cover the contest with glory, but 1968 is still a memorable Eurovision, as it was the first to be broadcast in colour. Britain had been the first Western European nation to broadcast colour TV, in July 1967. West Germany, the Netherlands and France soon followed. (However, we Europeans mustn’t be complacent here. America had had colour TV since the 1950s and Japan since 1960. Iraq started colour broadcasts in 1968, ahead of most European countries.) Most of the artists made full use of the new technology. Dresses were day-glo yellow, turquoise or lime green. Some of the men went colourful, too, especially Switzerland’s Gianni Mascolo with his ill-fitting orange suit, and two brightly clad medieval minstrels from Yugoslavia (who were one of the first Eurovision acts to employ that staple of later contests, the key change two-thirds of the way through the song). Even more sedately dressed male competitors began to ditch black ties, some for nylon polo-neck shirts or, in the case of Britain’s Cliff Richard, for a Regency dandy’s ruff exploding out of the front of his jacket. Colour was entering European – especially Northern European – life in other ways, too. More and more northerners were heading south for holidays in bright, sun-soaked Portugal, Greece or, most popular of all, Massiel’s homeland Spain, which welcomed around 17 million visitors in 1968 (the figure in 1960 had been about 5 million). Ironically, these destinations were now all dictatorships, Greece having joined the club thanks to a military coup in April 1967. Returning home to their prosperous democracies, these visitors could stay international by eating out at ever more affordable ethnic restaurants: many post-war immigrants had found this business to be a lucrative one. Younger Western Europeans could tune in to ‘pirate’ radio stations, like Radio Caroline, Radio London and Radio Veronica – which offered an alternative to stuffy, cautious government-run broadcasters. Even more challenging alternative media were on offer in northern capital cities – and especially London, where underground magazines like IT and Oz began to promote the full-on hippie lifestyle: sexual experimentation, drug use and radical politics. Outside these capital cities, sexual morality changed more slowly: historians are still arguing about how swinging the late sixties were in Clermont-Ferrand, Duisburg, Karlstad, Stoke-on-Trent or Zwolle. But there was clearly change in the air. Homosexual intercourse, long legal in Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, had been legalized in England and Wales in 1967. Germany followed suit in 1968 and 1969, East Germany passing its law ahead of West. In reaction to the new era, 1968 saw the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, which forbade contraception and reaffirmed the church’s view that marriage was the only place for sexual activity. France’s 1968 Eurovision entry was ‘La Source’ (The Spring), sung (beautifully, of course) by 1962 winner Isabelle Aubret. It’s a very strange song, about a place in a wood haunted by the victim of a gang-rape. But 1968 was a very strange year in France’s history. The events of May 1968 began with student protests about student issues: overcrowded classes, aloof academics and sleeping arrangements in dormitories. But behind them was a deep new radicalism. The students, who became known as ‘soixante-huitards’, argued that Europe’s growing prosperity – and, even worse, that of America – had been bought at the price of sterile conformity and the exploitation of the working class, poorer nations and of the natural world. The whole system was rotten, they argued; it needed to be ripped up and power put back in the hands of the people (or at least those people who agreed with the soixante-huitards). On 6 May, a huge demonstration marched through the French capital and erupted into violence; demonstrators hurled cobblestones at the CRS riot police, who responded with tear gas. On 10 May, barricades appeared in the Quartier Latin; the police charged in and arrested anyone they thought responsible. Public sympathy for the students rose; a general strike was called for 13 May. Wildcat strikes and factory occupations followed – anyone passing the Berliet truck factory in Lyon would have found the sign outside respelt as Liberte. By 18 May, two million workers were out. A week later this had risen to ten million. On 27 May, a deal was struck between employers and the official trades unions, but nobody was listening to them any longer. France looked about to collapse into anarchy. Then General de Gaulle disappeared. Riots in the streets, the economy in free fall, and no president. He had flown in secret to see the chief of the French forces in Germany.* Apparently de Gaulle’s first words to General Jacques Massu were ‘C’est foutu’ (it’s fucked). Massu assured him of the military’s support, promising the president he would again be able to have his breakfast on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. De Gaulle flew back to Paris, announced fresh elections and probably treated himself to a croissant and some proper coffee. Students returned to college and strikers to work, and when the elections took place on 23 and 30 June, the result was an overwhelming victory for the right. Later that year, the new French government did about the least soixante-huitard thing it could do, test a hydrogen bomb. The wind of change in 1968 soon wafted through lands unable to participate in Eurovision. Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia had been particularly slow to cleanse itself of the legacy of Stalin. Even the Russians had concluded that change was necessary, and in January a new party secretary had been appointed. Alexander Dubcek was not a freewheeling sixties radical but a loyal party man who thought the party should do a better job. This meant liberalizing Czechoslovak life, giving people more freedoms, curtailing the powers of the secret police, abolishing press censorship and turning over more of the economy to consumer goods. He talked of elections, which he was convinced the Party would win: what could be better than ‘Socialism with a human face’? Press censorship was abolished. Western Europe watched with admiration. Eurovision did its bit: Austria asked Czech singer Karel Gott to represent it. Support for this quiet revolution didn’t extend to giving ‘Tausend Fenster’ (A Thousand Windows) many votes, however. He came twelfth. Perhaps the judges knew what was going to happen. On the night of 20–21 August, Czechoslovakia was invaded by 250,000 troops from Russia, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria. It was a much less grisly affair than Hungary 1956. Dubcek told people not to resist; a few did, and eighty-two of them died. The subsequent clampdown was gradual. Dubcek remained in office, though now with little power; when he was finally sacked he didn’t suffer the fate of Hungary’s 1956 leaders, execution, but was given a job as a forestry official. Some people were allowed to leave the country. But the statues of Stalin remained – and the building work continued along the wall between the two Europes. A third European conflict area in 1968 was Northern Ireland – a topic which will soon find its way onto the Eurovision stage, courtesy of Dana in 1970, and so will be discussed there. Even in Brussels, 1968 saw calls for change. On 21 December, Sicco Mansholt, a former Dutch resistance fighter now EEC Commissioner for Agriculture, filed a report highly critical of the Common Agricultural Policy,...
