Letter from Israel

The Politics of Music

By Meredith Price

Boaz Mauda is Israel's candidate for this year's Eurovision, a televised singing competition.

If you've never lived in Europe or Israel, you might have never even heard of it. But the annual Eurovision televised song contest that started in 1956 — one of the longest-running television programs in history — has practically every teenager in the more than 40 participating countries glued to their television screens for hours. Because the winner is decided by a system of popularity, viewers are encouraged to vote for their favorite candidates either by telephone or text message (they are not allowed to vote for their home country).

The contest provides a springboard for singers to advance their careers and gain exposure, but very few of the winners have gone on to achieve international fame. The two most famous Eurovision winners are the legendary group, ABBA, who won for Sweden in 1974, and Celine Dion, who won for Switzerland in 1988.

Israel started sending candidates to Eurovision in 1973, when the well-known singer Ilanit represented the country with her song Ey Sham. Since then, Israelis have taken home three victories — in 1978 in Paris with the song A-Ba-Ni-Bi, in 1979 when Jerusalem hosted the contest, and in 1998 with the controversial singer Dana International, a transsexual star who took Europe by storm with her song Diva.

The religious community in Israel was deeply opposed to her representing Israel, and after her sweeping victory, she replied to them with the following message: "My victory proves God is on my side. I want to send my critics a message of forgiveness and say to them: Try to accept me and the kind of life I lead. I am what I am and this does not mean I don't believe in God and I am not really part of the Jewish Nation."

Of course, Dana International is only one of the many controversies surrounding Israel's participation in Eurovision during the past decade. The Eurovision contest itself is often criticized for being more about politics than music and showcasing "bubblegum pop," and Israel is certainly no stranger to political controversy.

In 2000, the band Ping-Pong, a Tel Aviv pop group that included two journalists for the newspaper Ma'ariv, entered the Eurovision competition as a joke. They ended up beating 83 other entries but were officially "disowned" by the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA is the Israeli television company that sponsors the competition and chooses the candidates) after they waved Syrian flags onstage and made provocative moves with cucumbers. The band's song Sameach, which means "happy" in Hebrew, was about an Israeli woman on a kibbutz who is having an affair with a man in Damascus. According to Eytan Fox, the band's choreographer, Ping Pong intended "to represent a new kind of Israeli who wants to be normal and have peace. We want to have fun and not go to war, but the right wing is not happy about that."

Last year, Israel stirred up controversy again when the popular and successful band Teapacks sang Push the Button at the Eurovision contest in Finland. The song's lyrics, which are sung in Hebrew, English and French, refer to crazy rulers with demonic goals. "I don't wanna die, I wanna see the flowers bloom, don't wanna go kaput-kaboom," sings lead singer Kobi Oz.

The song is widely considered to be about the threat of nuclear annihilation to Israel based on the statements made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 that he wished to see Israel wiped off the map. But although the band members alluded to wanting to stir up controversy — especially at a highly publicized event like Eurovision — after they were almost banned from the contest for their "inappropriate" political message, Teapacks claimed that the song was universal and not specifically about Iran. "The song is about the state of humanity in general, whereby a minority has access to excessive power," Oz said. "The song could be about the terror in Russia or Spain, or the violence on the streets of England or London." Yet, despite eventually being allowed to perform and garnering popular support for their catchy tune, Teapacks was surprisingly eliminated from the Eurovision finals.

According to Time magazine's Bryan Coll, this was just one more proof of the fact that the competition is more about diplomatic relations than raw talent. "The night's events also proved beyond doubt that petty factionalism is alive and well in today's Europe," he wrote. "Indeed, the more Eurovision grows, the more numerous and complex the public's voting alliances seem to become."

This year, IBA teamed up with the local television station Channel 2 in order to pick a contestant from the 450 entries. The winner? Not surprisingly, it just happens to be Boaz Mauda, a 20-year-old singer who won the fifth season of Channel 2's popular television series A Star Is Born. The show is the Israeli version of American Idol — but with a lot less talent.

Mauda, who has Yemenite roots and worked as a goat herder in his home village of Eliyakim until making his television debut, dedicated the winning song to his handicapped mother. Nicknamed the "Yemenite Cowboy," Mauda says he started singing at the synagogue when he was 5 and always dreamed of representing Israel in the Eurovision. Yet, although his song, The Fire in Your Eyes, lacks the political controversy and catchy beat of the Teapacks tune, it was written in collaboration with Dana International, the former transsexual winner. It tells the story of yearning for lost loved ones and has an unmistakable ethnic sound. Of course, his muscular biceps and dark eyes probably won't hurt Mauda's chances at this year's contest in the Serbian capital of Belgrade at the end of May.

For the first time in Eurovision history, there will be two semifinals to decide which countries will make it to the finals, held on May 24. Since it is well known that the event is political, maybe someone should remind the more than 110 million expected viewers who will be voting from home that a present is in order for Israel's 60th birthday.

Meredith Price Levitt grew up in Marietta and bought a ticket to Tel Aviv on Sept. 10, 2001. She writes a column on Israeli innovations and cultural features for The Jerusalem Post. You can reach her at meredithmprice@yahoo.com.