UKRAINE – The video which showed Jamala singing “1944” in Tatar, a year ago, uploaded on May 18th 2015, is ow set as private and cannot be seen. Although Jamala is a deserved winner, the EBU has to respond as Jamala was shown to perform the song in a concert in front of obviously big number of audience. Too much breach of rules this year is simply hurting the reputation of the contest and EBU must take actions.
JAMALA’S RESPONSE
The Eurovision Song Contest 2016 winner, Jamala responded via Facebook saying that the performance was actually a rehearsal with different lyrics than those of ‘1944’ and is not breaching the EBU rules which basically talk about commercial release of the song. After all the same thing happened with another song in the Ukrainian national selection, not to mention the similar issue with a Danish entry in DMGP 2016.
EBU’S STATEMENT
“The Eurovision Song Contest rule (1.2.1a) which states that entries must not have been commercially released before September 1 exists to make sure that the Contest can welcome new compositions each year, and that every song can compete on a level playing field. The purpose of the rule is to prevent wide distribution of any song that might give it an unfair advantage in the competition the following May. In the past, songs that had been publicly available before the deadline, but had not been accessible by a wide audience, had been granted permission to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest by the Reference Group. In the case of Jamala’s “1944” the EBU’s attention has been drawn, after the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest, to a public performance of an earlier version of the song in May 2015. The video of a small concert had only been viewed by a few hundred people before it was discovered in the past few days. The EBU, based on previous decisions in the Reference Group, therefore has concluded that the published video did not give Jamala’s song any unfair advantage in the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest and the song was eligible to compete.”
#cometogether, #eurovision-2016, #jamala, #jamala-susana-jamaladinova, #jamala-1944
