ABSTRACT
Eurovision offers the most musically and linguistically diverse song repertoire in history, and yet it is often accused of a predictable conformity and a stultifying homogeneity. This chapter explores how the contest presents the differences of an Other (cultural, regional, national, ethnic, racial, gender, and/or sexual) identity through a song and its staging. Following on Alf Björnberg discussion of Eurovision’s “return to ethnicity” since the late 1990s and early 2000s and the “Swedenization” of the contest’s compositional opportunities in recent years, as well as Philip Bohlman’s writings on how Eurovision engages various kind of minority identities through its music, this chapter examines how the rhythms, tonalities, and voices of Eurovision songs encourage a recognition of difference, with a focus on two of Europe’s perennial Others—Africa and Islam—and culturalconstructs of masculinity as well.
