Eurovision & Armenia in 2017

A Little Background on Eurovision and Armenia’s 2017 Artist

The Eurovision Song Contest hosts dozens of European countries every single year to perform and share their culture towards over a hundred million people on a single night. For some smaller countries, this is their sole chance to promote themselves to such a big audience. For Armenia, they have been participating since 2006 with over 13 different performances since then. Their top entries being in 2008 with a song called “Qélé, qélé” by Sirusho, a song about Armenian roots and love, and “Not Alone” by Aram MP3 in 2014 which both reached 4^th place in their respective competitions. Armenia’s submission in 2017 was a song called “Fly with Me” by Artsvik Harutyunan, a Russian-Armenian singer and songwriter, who was 32 years old at the time of the songs release. After being born in Kapan, Armenia, her family moved to Moscow, Russia when she was 5 years old. She started to pursue music after being inspired by Whitney Houston at the age of 8 years old and 20 years later she became a member of a musical project called “Jazz Parking” and then auditioned for the Russian version of “The Voice” (Adams, 2017). Although she had major Russian influences around her, Artsvik never forgot about her Armenian heritage and culture, and she would always release covers of famous Armenian songs. Artsvik was later chosen to represent Armenia in 2017 and the same composers who wrote “Not Alone” for their 2014 entry, also wrote “Fly with Me” and said “as soon as [they] heard Artsvik’s voice, [they] knew what to do.” (Adams, 2017). They proclaimed “Her voice [was]… diverse, her vocal range [was] very wide and the color of her voice is unique and beautiful” which they used to influence the lyricism and writing process of the song.

“Fly with Me” by Artsvik (Armenia, 2017)

Although the song “Fly with Me” sung by Artsvik was beautifully composed and was a good representation of the year’s theme “celebrating diversity”, Armenia’s participation placed 18^th in the finale with a total of 79 points. The song writer’s Lilith and Levon Navasardyan incorporated many aspects of diversity and uniqueness from the musical instruments to the vocals that Artsvik contributed. From the orientalist aspects of choreography to the gimmicks they use to catch the audience’s attention all aided in the outcome of a unique performance with many different aspects to dissect and breakdown, including the lyrics, the presentation, and the overall performance on stage.

“Fly with Me” is a song encapsulating love and the beauty of it. It is portrayed in a way as if Artsvik is narrating a tale of love, as the first lines of the song are “wanna tell a story about a girl with history, take it from heart it’s gonna be your beat”. The writers want to capture the feeling of love in a few simple phrases that can seize the attention of the audience. They want them to understand the message of love and how according to Artsvik “we must never forget that this girls light and love is for all of us” (LLC, 2017). With the lyrics “fly with me high oh high, with me high oh high, never stop believing that love will take us high”, the message can be interpreted as how love has no limits and it can take you higher which summarizes the symbolism and metaphorical usage of the repetition of flying. Near the beginning of the song, Artsvik sings “many colors and shades, so many voices to embrace all around” highlighting 2017’s theme “celebrating diversity” by introducing the idea of our differences and the importance of understanding how important it is to accept and treasure one another and how our differences make us unique and more powerful. She sings this line to show how despite our differences, we are all deserving of experiencing the type of love mentioned in the song. The lyrics “many stories and tales she took it all into her space, hear the sound” can be understood through the year’s theme as many people have their own stories to tell from the drastic ways and experiences everyone has come from. For example, this could range from different neighborhoods, different family histories, different geopolitical conflicts which all impacts the stories they have to tell and their experiences which shapes their views. Like Artsvik, who has both Russian and Armenian influences. We can learn from these experiences and better understand the world around to learn and love our neighbors.

Staging and Background

The staging of the entire performance was extremely captivating starting with a red background and smoke with only Artsvik singing in the center of the stage with an all-black outfit, bringing the attention to her despite all the color. This overwhelming color on the stage can symbolize the strong feelings of love. When the musical instruments start, the background changes into a type of hypnotizing background with red/purple and black. The gimmicks that Armenia uses to capture the audience’s attention can be directed towards Artsvik’s unique voice which she uses to create runs. When Arstvik starts vocalizing, the background dancers appear next to her, also wearing all black, dancing with very fast hand movements. The red theme continues throughout the performance with the flashing lights and smoke drawing the audience’s attention to the most intense parts. The background of the performance changes to many different designs which can be inferred come from general Middle Eastern and South Asian influences. At the very end of the performance, a pink phoenix is animated flying throughout the stadium reinforce the symbolization of the idea of limitless love and “flying”.

Armenia and National Identity

Armenia’s main nationally identifying factors can be summarized as religion and language. Christianity dominates Armenia with over 98% of the country, and as Armenia was historically one of the first countries to convert to Christianity, it is one of their most contributing factors to their individuality. Another factor is their language, Armenian has one of the most unique languages, being the only language under the Indo-European branch. Despite this, Armenia’s 2017 performance doesn’t include any Armenian words.

Even though Armenia’s performance doesn’t imply any Armenian patriotism or any hints of Armenian flags, the country has a vast and extremely complicated history in terms of their freedom and other conflicts, but for some reason certain events rarely gets mentioned in their performances which can also be one of their only chances to speak to the whole continent. In 2017, there was lots of tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan with the Narogno-Karabakh territory which lead to “significant spike in security concerns within Armenia.” (Freedom House, 2019). There were multiple protests and a ton of violence in terms of police trying to stop them. Still, none of these events can compare to their extremely tragical and major history in the early 1900s with the Armenian Genocide. The killing of over 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. This event still looms over Armenia and the effects can be seen everywhere and much of their history has been destroyed, their population has decreased exponentially, and they never got reparations from Turkey. Turkey has yet to acknowledge their genocidal past. But still, Armenia rarely includes these elements to bring awareness to their history in their performances, except in 2015 with their song “Face the Shadow” by Genealogy that commemorated the 100^th anniversary of the genocide.

Music and Orientalism

The musical instruments playing during the background when Artsvik and her dances have their dance breaks can be compared to the Armenian string instruments, like the historical Armenian Tar; dating back to the late 19^th century (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022). Although there are influences of Armenian culture within the performance, Egyptian and Indian influences can come through their performance as well. The dances that the backup dancers do throughout the entire performance mimic the Egyptian belly dancing movements that people are generally familiar and stereotypically categorize with Egyptian culture. This could be an example of cultural appropriation, but in the example of Armenia and Egypt, neither country is more dominant over the other. This can be feeding into the heavy example of orientalism, where they are taking things from other Eastern countries, marketing it as part of their own culture, so when Westerners see this, they can confirm in their head the stereotypical eastern tropes that they already are familiar with. This can also be seen throughout the halfway mark of the performance when the dancers use a dance with clear influence from Indian traditional dance. Through the orientalism lens, they blend cultures that are not similar to appeal to the Western eye.

References

Adams, W. L. (2017, March 18). Armenia: Artsvik unveils Eurovision 2017 song "fly with me". wiwibloggs. Retrieved February 25, 2022, from https://wiwibloggs.com/2017/03/18/armenia-artsvik-unveils-eurovision-2017-song-fly-with-me/181560/

Artsvik. (2017). "Fly with Me" (Armenia). Eurovision Song Contest 2017 Kyiv [DVD]. Universal Music Group.

Armenia: Freedom in the World 2017 Country Report | Freedom House. (2019). Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/country/armenia/freedom-world/2017

LLC, H. C. (2017, September 3). "Fly with me" Artsvik's song premieres on March 18. Eurovision. Retrieved February 25, 2022, from http://www.eurovision.am/en/eurovision/news/2017/03/09/%E2%80%9CFLY-WITH-ME%E2%80%9D-Artsvik%E2%80%99s-song-premieres-on-March-18/645

Tar | Armenian or Georgian | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (2022). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/500947

 

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