Re: ARMENIA 2012
Armenia’s Second Campaign Season: Will Armenia be in Eurovision? Who?
Pre-election passions in Armenia run high among politicos, media, etc. But in the pop culture world, the current heated topic is Eurovision 2012.
Every day a new name comes up as a potential candidate to represent Armenia in Baku, while the more general issue of whether Armenia will even be represented in the Azerbaijani capital has no definite answer yet.
The selection of the song to be presented at this popular pan-European contest to be held on May 22-26 is done behind closed doors and in extreme secrecy, unlike the pervious times with more democratic selection processes involving a public voting based on televised performances.
Last month the Armenian Public TV announced that “taking into account the peculiarities of Eurovision 2012 it has been decided to hold the selection process of both the singer and the song through inner discussions rather than public voting as it had been done for the previous five contests”.
Even the selection procedure is kept in secrecy; all that is known is that no contest has been announced for the song, and the commission will, most probably, engage a composer of their choice to submit a song.
Random names are penetrating through this wall of secrecy that many people find rather surprising, and YouTube is full of all guesswork with all kinds of potential participants from Tata Simonyan to Austrian singer with Armenian roots Sankil Jones.
However, the closest to the truth is the option whose name has kept coming up more persistently than others’ this week, the Dorians rock band whose song “This is Our World” written for Eurovision had over 35,000 views on YouTube as of reporting and keeps getting positive feedback.
At a Monday press conference Minister of Culture Hasmik Poghosyan stressed that Armenia must participate in the contest and spoke positively about the Dorians as a potential candidate for the contest.
The popularity of the Dorians, a five-member rock band founded in 2008, has been growing lately especially among teens and young adults. The Dorians have won several prestigious awards, including the 2011 “Best Rock Band”, “Best Video” and “Best Vocal” awards at the National Music Awards ceremony in Armenia. The group already once made a bid to represent Armenia at Eurovision when it participated in the 2009 selection eventually won by sisters Inga & Anush Arshakyan.
The band’s lead vocalist Gor Sujyan, who hasn’t received any offers from the selection commission yet, says he is willing to “perform in Azerbaijan” if given a chance.
Similar willingness has also been expressed by another potential candidate – Los-Angeles-based Armenian singer Lucia Moon.
With her roots from Nagorno Karabakh and her childhood spent in Baku, Moon has submitted two of her love-theme songs to the commission, and although has not received any response yet, she is very eager to participate.
“…you know, I am from there and I spent my childhood in Baku, I have classmates there, whom I haven’t met ever since I left; neither I can go there, nor they can come here. So, I thought, that under the current circumstances I’d be the best candidate,” she said in a recent interview to 1in.am news.
While Armenia is selecting a participant, there has been no official statement made on whether it is going to participate at all in this most-anticipated pan-European annual song contest.
Back in October Alexan Harutyunyan, the chairman of the TV and Radio Council of the Public TV, stated that Armenia’s participation, or lack thereof, will be determined in December after they receive safety guarantees from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) as “We do not need half-assurances of the Azeris”.
However in January, Eurovision Event Supervisor Sietse Bakker said in an interview with Mediamax that EBU does not provide safety guarantees because “that is not our function”, adding that Armenia will receive equal conditions with other participants, rather than special security guarantees.
While new names keep emerging as potential participants, the other widely discussed issue is whether Armenia should go to Baku or not.
A number of singers believe that boycotting would be the right thing to do, whereas IT specialists believe boycotting would be a mistake amidst the information war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Samvel Martirosyan, specializing in information security, believes that for as long as Azerbaijan behaves as civil as it does now, “boycotting on Armenia’s part would be more of a surprise to the international community”.
Martirosyan stresses that in spite of Eurovision’s little value as a cultural event, it is important by the scale of recognition and popularity.
“So, we should take part, but brace ourselves for some nerve-wracking experience,” he says.
http://www.armenianow.com/arts_and_culture/35406/armenia_eurovision_2012_entry_baku
As for "fire" you should know that the word in this context stands for shooting with weapons and not burning of Azerbaijani oil.
