Podcast

Eurovision: Music, Kitsch, and Politics

"So it's these old ladies doing folk music over a techno beat. It’s exactly what it sounds like."

The Eurovision Song Contest was created in 1956 as an opportunity to bring the nations and the people together in an expressly non-political fashion—through song. Now, 60 years later, Eurovision is often used as a specific political tool. James Evans and Yuval Weber discuss the history of the song contest and how Eurovision has been used as a political tool to reignite recent conflagration between Ukraine and Russia.

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Associate Director

Cris Martin is the Associate Director at the Davis Center.

Research Assistant Professor, Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service