Life after Eurovision

Raphael Vassallo talks to Toni Sant and Guze Stagno about the Maltese obsession with the Eurovision song contest:

It’s strange how, in years when Malta performs particularly well in the Eurovision Song Contest, no mention is ever made of political backscratching, or how ludicrous the entire neighbourly voting ethos really is. And yet, when Malta fares miserably, it is always a case of “not having friendly neighbours” to give us those much needed 12 points. Not only that: but after Olivia Lewis failed to even qualify last Thursday, l-orizzont ran a front page story suggesting that Malta boycott the annual international competition in protest. Could it possibly have come to this? Could we be so blinded by the glitz and glitter of Europe’s kitchiest festival, that we’ve actually mistaken it for something important?

Toni Sant, internet pioneer and long-standing critic of Malta’s attitude towards the ESC, is the first to point out that, “as a nation we appear obsessed with the Eurovision Song Contest.”...Sant – whose own contribution to Malta’s music scene takes the form of a regular podcast series celebrating Maltese music throughout the world – evidently shares Mifsud’s concern that the Eurovision has somehow served to cook up an artificial impression of “Malteseness”. But isn’t part of the contest’s more immediate local appeal that it gives the country a reason to celebrate (or commiserate, as the case may be) on a purely national level? Sant disagrees: “The Eurovision is not really bringing the nation together the way we’d like to think,” he points out. “It just brings together some people who disagree on everything else, be it political party affiliation, village band club support, etc.”

Before last year’s edition, Sant had accurately predicted the eventual triumph of Finland’s demonic entry, ‘Hard Rock Hallelujah’, performed by rock-trolls Lordi. He had suggested back then that Malta’s only hope of salvation was Xtruppaw: a young, irreverent and above all fun local punk band, with more than a hint of revolution in its anti-establishment lyrics. “Xtruppaw doesn’t exist in isolation,” Sant points out, in reference to a growing number of successful local bands in non-mainstream genres such as punk, reggae, ska and indie rock. “Then again, simply sending someone like Xtuppaw to the Eurovision without the appropriate financial and promotional backing is like throwing Christians to the lions…”

Sant is not the only notorious ESC critic to advocate an altogether different approach to next year’s edition in Belgrade. Guzè Stagno, novelist and self-styled “tortured artist”, thinks time is ripe to put the Maltese language back onto the European stage. “The way I see it, singing songs in English is so-o-o overrated,” the author of Inbid Ta’ Kuljum and Xemx Wisq Sabiha decrees. “Let’s send a song in Maltese next year, just for a change.” Stagno concurs with both Mifsud and Sant that ESC has somehow distorted all notions of cultural identity. The result is that our choice of entry each year appears designed to reflect European expectations, rather than to showcase what we are actually capable of producing on a musical level... .”