ABSTRACT
The Eurovision Song Contest is an underestimated subject in the field of ethnomusicology studies. The first approach was Bohlman's book (2004) on music and nationalism which devoted a chapter to this topic. In 2013, Tragaki gathered the contributions of several scholars and edited the first book that adopts the theoretical and epistemological orientations of ethnomusicology, popular music studies and musicology to study the ESC. Since then, no other reference works have been published in this area. However, the ESC is a privileged field to understand the basic assumptions of ethnomusicology: 1) the relationship between musical practices and behaviours, their contexts and the concepts created around them; 2) the musical changes in the last 64 years; 3) the role of television as a musical medium; 4) the phenomenon of musical reception and its role in the construction of individual and collective identities. Analysing the example of the Portuguese participation in ESC, and looking to these four ethnomusicological milestones, this chapter demonstrates how music in television, and the ESC in particular, is able to mediate values and challenge concepts about an imagined Europe.
