I’ve just been reading in the BBC World Serbian section about how they hope that Eurovision will help the rest of Europe see it in a much better light. Well after what we witnessed from the hall last evening from some of the regular locals they’d better hope that some of their people don’t let ’em down.
For clarity, “last evening” meant the second Eurovision semi-final at Belgrade Arena on 22 May 2008, rather than the grand final taking place today. Albania performed sixth, with Olta Boka singing “Zemrën E Lamë Peng”, and subsequently qualified for the final in ninth place with 67 points.
The booing and hissing during Albania’s performance was certainly my experience of the hall, and it’s pretty horrible to sit in among when it’s going on, given some of the very recent history of this place. The political background was especially sensitive: Kosovo had declared independence from Serbia on 17 February, followed by protests and nationalist unrest in Belgrade. But there were also a few other causes for concern. The very normal looking family of old ladies and nice girls in front of us repeatedly gave big thumbs down to anything Ex Yugo that wasn’t Serbian, and many people around the hall gave an apparent nationalistic hand sign when their song was on.
That hand sign may have been the Serbian three-finger salute, although that’s my interpretation rather than something I can establish with certainty from the hall. It can signify Serbian Orthodox identity or ethnic Serbian pride, but it is also used in sporting and celebratory settings. Nor can I claim that everyone in the audience was behaving this way, or that the reaction was systematically directed at every former Yugoslav entry. This was what I saw and heard around us.
Now this may be just down to my naive interpretation of local rivalries, as I’m sure an English entry would afford similar hand signs in Scotland if ever our scabby isles were dismembered into their constituent parts, but given what we know, it perhaps wasn’t the best advert for a country I’ve had an absolutely smashing time in, and really enjoyed the company of pretty much every local I’ve met.
Just be prepared for a fair bit jeering when anything remotely Albanian is mentioned on the telly tonight. Serbia’s own entry, Jelena Tomašević with “Oro”, will appear later in the grand final at number 23.
