Eurovision 2022 final

 

It was bigger than a regular Eurovision final

You can vote for a lot of things at Eurovision. Things that might not be music. Moldovan buskis for example (239 points from the people), Serbian hand washing (225 points from the people) or a Spanish butt (just over 200 points from both the jury and the people). I love it, and many would probably argue that the soul of Eurovision is precisely its breadth that accommodates all the nuances of life.

But when it comes to Ukraine, it has been extremely important in some places to emphasize that it is the music and nothing else that should be voted for in the ESC, and that Ukraine certainly did not have the best contribution. 

To those of you who have asked this question, What do you think music is? Pole vaulting with Duplantis?

A kind of European Championship in pitch and falsetto?

To reduce music to simple entertainment in this way is really to misunderstand everything. 

Music has always been man's trick to move mountains, and manages to tie the emotional ties for which words are not enough.

Cornelia did it magically, and is more than worthy of her fourth place in the unusually strong competition. 

When she sings "Hold me closer" you want nothing more than to cry with empathy through the lyrics. Lick your own broken heart. Break and become whole again. 

Such are the symbiotic conditions of music.

Even when there is war.

Ukraine's song is liberating in its own right, with its brave mix of kitschy rap and wistful folk songs.

 But it has also, as a tribute to all Ukrainian mothers, acquired an important symbolic meaning.

When I read a translation of the text, I find lines about flowering fields that have turned gray. Words that now acquire an aftertaste of devastation, and my thoughts wander associatively to another little defiant flower – ”Edelweiss” in the ”Sound of music”. 

Do you remember how the nuns in the film, in the middle of a music competition in Salzburg, deceived the Germans and saved the entire von Trapp family across the border into Switzerland?

 How did everyone sing before? It's like a nice little finger on the finger of Nazism.

This was partly the same thing. A popular celebration that became a historic stand for peace.

”This victory is for every Ukrainian,” said the Kalush Orchestra, while receiving the audience's standing ovations. 

The feeling of something solemn was not to be missed when the competitors ' faces were slowly filled with both tears and smiles.

A respite in the middle of it all.

Then it doesn't end there, and the mere thought of what we don't know about tomorrow, it stings. After all, how ESC 2023 should even be arranged is the smallest problem at the moment.

Ukraine wins-after emotional words .