ABSTRACT
Christopher Small’s concept of “musicking” can help us understand the ways the contest engages its audiences in the arena as well as in venues and performances around the event, such as public viewings, clubs, bars, and parties. Musicking’s triad of people, places, and sounds uncovers deeper meanings around the contest beyond the carefully staged performances for the television screen. The real-life interactions between the contest’s music and its fans happen in locations far from the arena and its official arcades, in the places where people come together to make their own sense of the songs they hear. From Copenhagen’s City Hall Square the night Denmark won the 2013 contest to the BallCanCan parties at Vienna’s Ost-Klub; from the mournful World War II commemorations in the central square in Kyiv, Ukraine, to a festive gay party at a bar on Christopher Street in New York’s Greenwich neighborhood to the virtual celebrations during the pandemic year: these diverse locations reveal the ways fans come together to celebrate their shared values and a sense of communal belonging through Eurovision’s music.
