Royal Musical Association Annual Conference 2017: Edge Hill University Panel: The European Song Contest: discussion with Jon Ola Sand, Executive Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest (EBU)

The annual Eurovision Song Contest, (ESC) founded in 1956 by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), attracts songs representing each of 42 broadcasting members in national heats culminating each May in two televised live shows and a three-and-a-half hour finale which is claimed to be watched by nearly 200 million viewers. There is also a Junior version of the competition. Technically adventurous, it is the generator of complex statistics based on sophisticated voting systems. Academically it represents a significant supra-national musical project centered on socio-political concepts of shared European identity, with their shifting aesthetic parities and diversities, but in the form of a symbolic contest between separate sovereign entities. The aim of this panel is to advance academic understanding of the ESC, which has been too quickly dismissed as the producer of camp tat on one side and, on the other, of how hegemonic affiliations benefit from factional polling. The session will take the form of a sequence of short papers from the panel of five, which will include an executive representative of the EBU and - we hope - a former Eurovision finalist, to be followed by a round-table discussion on the issues raised, with the contribution of the chief executive of the Contest, Jon Ola Sand.