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Sweden sweeps Azerbaijan's contentious Eurovision

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  • Sweden sweeps Azerbaijan's contentious Eurovision

    Kuwait Times, Kuwait
    May 27 2012

    Sweden sweeps Azerbaijan's contentious Eurovision


    Swedish star Loreen yesterday celebrated victory over rivals including
    Russian pensioners in a spectacular Eurovision Song Contest that host
    Azerbaijan hoped would banish qualms over its rights record. Loreen,
    28, the daughter of Berber immigrants from Morocco, wowed voters with
    a catchy dance number called `Euphoria' featuring an exultant chorus
    accompanied by a high-kicking dance duet and a storm of artificial
    snow. The slick four-hour show late Saturday was the biggest event
    ever hosted by energy-rich Azerbaijan as it seeks to present a glitzy
    image despite concerns over rights violations under the autocratic
    rule of the Aliyev dynasty.

    Loreen's victory was the fifth by Sweden in the contest and followed
    in the footsteps of its most famous band Abba who won the contest in
    1974 with `Waterloo'-for many the song that defined the kitschy
    contest for all time. `It's just a question of taste. This year it
    happened to me,' was how Loreen, whose real name is Lorine Zineb Noka
    Talhaoui, modestly explained her victory. Swedish Foreign Minister
    Carl Bildt tweeted: `Yes, Loreen certainly lived up to high
    expectations.' Second place on Saturday went to Russia's heartwarming
    Buranovskiye Babushki, a choir of elderly village women aged up to 76
    who performed a disco song `Party for Everybody' in English and their
    local Finno-Ugric language.

    `There are tears of joy. The Babushki are so happy with their
    success,' band administrator Maria Tolstukhina told Interfax, adding
    their earnings would be spent on building a new church in their native
    village of Buranovo. Third was Serbian Eurovision veteran Zelijko
    Joksimovic who had already competed in three previous contests, once
    as a singer and twice as a composer. The show included the usual range
    of the weird and exotic including a Norwegian rapper of Iranian origin
    who came last, half-naked French gymnasts and Irish duo Jedward who
    ended the routine by getting drenched by a fountain. There was
    disappointment for Britain after veteran crooner Engelbert
    Humperdinck-brought in to revive its notoriously bad Eurovision
    fortunes-scored just 12 points and came second last with his ballad
    `Love Will Set You Free'.

    Sweden's victory with 372 points with an uplifting song tailor made
    for the contest was never in doubt, although voting was marked by the
    usual backslapping patterns with the Greeks voting for the Cypriots
    and vice versa. The final's 26 acts lit up the spectacular Crystal
    Hall built to host the contest in barely half a year on the Caspian
    Sea, with an audience of some 20,000 inside the venue and 100 million
    television viewers. The host entry Sabina Babayeva was not all that
    far from securing a repeat of Azerbaijan's 2011 success that earned
    the nation the right to host the contest with her `When the Music
    Dies' coming in fourth.

    Loreen ran into controversy during the contest by meeting local rights
    activists who briefed her on the lack of democratic freedoms in the
    tightly controlled ex-Soviet state. However at the post-contest news
    conference she sidestepped a question about how she would support the
    people of Azerbaijan further, saying simply that: `I will support the
    Azerbaijan people from my heart.' In Baku the festive atmosphere had
    been clouded by the detentions of dozens of opposition activists who
    attempted to hold several peaceful demonstrations calling for
    democratic freedoms in the tightly-controlled state.

    Azerbaijan is run by strongman President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded
    his late father Heidar Aliyev in 2003. His wife Mehriban Aliyeva
    headed the organising committee of Eurovision and his son-in-law, Emin
    Agalarov, a Moscow-based businessman with a budding pop career, sang
    in a black leather jacket in a musical interlude after the voting. The
    event was also far beyond the reach of ordinary Azerbaijanis, with
    tickets for the final starting at 160 manat ($204), half the monthly
    income of the average Azeri, according to World Bank statistics. With
    political sensitivities never far from this Eurovision, the
    promotional videos shown included landscapes from Nagorny Karabakh,
    which Armenian separatists backed by Yerevan seized from Azerbaijan in
    a war in the 1990s. Armenia had pulled out of the contest saying it
    feared hostile treatment and Azerbaijan barred those who had visited
    Nagorny Karabakh from travelling to the contest. - AFP

    http://news.kuwaittimes.net/2012/05/27/sweden-sweeps-azerbaijans-contentious-eurovision/

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