Bilyi holos vs the juries: cross-cultural conflict

When the juries were brought back into the Eurovision voting system in 2009, their briefing was clear: Reduce the power of diaspora/neighbourly televoting and bring the focus back onto the music. This is great in theory of course but how was that set to work out in practice? Of course a number of criteria would have to be laid out to establish both the qualification of members of these new juries and also how exactly they were expected to mark the songs. Looking at these criteria that were deemed important enough to reinstate the jurors and using the power of hindsight, I would like to highlight the successes and failures of the jury system. As to be quite frank, without evaluating from the past it is hard to forge a pathway into the future!

Unfortunately the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has since either removed (or potentially moved, breaking all the links from the time) the details of the jury guidelines from 2009 from the Eurovision website, it has been twelve years after all (gosh). But Eurofans are very dedicated and whilst the EBU may have since had to clear up space on their website – various fan blogs from the time have preserved valuable information.

The escbigmouth blog may not have posted since 2010 but their summary of the information given in the guidelines is still accessible to this day. Truth being told, not much has really changed beyond the point allocation itself. Five jury members were to be chosen from different perspectives related to the music or performance industries. These people should also be of different ages and genders, thus giving a more diverse and demographically reflective outlook. Bribery or external interests in the outcome of the contest were also a concern and jurors had to sign that they would vote ‘independently’ and were given ‘voting instructions’.

Asides from expertise alone, the return of jurors was heralded for being more likely to result in songs being judged for the full content (not just a voting recap snippet) by people who had listened to each and every song in the contest, multiple times by the then Executive Supervisor Svante Stockelius. In other words, the juries should know these songs inside out!

“a jury takes the opportunity to listen to the songs several times before they make up their minds.”

Svante Stockelius (ESC Supervisor 2004-2010)

Maybe its just me, but it seems very apparent to me that the main criteria for the juries at the time were:

1. To know music or a related aspect of show business inside and out
2. To not only be experts in the industry but to know and understand the rules and songs in said edition’s contest
3. To be diverse and reflective of the country they were representing the music/show business industries of
4. To be transparent and follow strict procedure to prevent corruption
5. To not fall into the block voting patterns observed in the televote at the time

So that is what the juries were at least initially set up to achieve, but as I mentioned it has been twelve years! In that sense I am more than willing to concede that the initial problems may well have since been solved in the EBU’s eyes and the jury has gone onto reflect a different purpose. For comparison’s sake, let’s quickly scan over the 2021 jury guidance before I make any of my conclusions, particularly in relation to bilyi holos which after all these paragraphs is yet to emerge!

As far as format goes, little has changed. We still see five jury members, consisting of different ages, genders and backgrounds all of whom are citizens of their country (exceptions can be granted). Once again they are required to vote independently, have no connection to the participating acts they will be judging and have signed a declaration confirming this and that they have read the voting instructions.

A few things have either changed though or been officially written in a publicly accessible way that is not available for the 2009 contest. For one it is made clear that the EBU requires an “independent notary” in each country to check the voting is done in compliance with the rules. Furthermore, if the EBU wish they can send in another “voting observer” to ensure everything is above board. There is also a rotation of jury members to prevent them being the same every year.

We now also have a list of the actual aspects of the song jurors are being asked to mark on these days “vocal capacity”, “performance on stage”, “composition”, “originality” and “overall impression”. Interestingly the official rules do not mention the widely held belief that a song should be “radio-friendly” to get jury love but rather are a more abstract set of criteria which seem more suitable to the wide variety of genres we hear at Eurovision.

So is the juries aims any different now as it was in 2009? Are the juries evolving? And most importantly what does any of this have to do with the title!?

On one hand I would argue no, the juries’ aims and composition aren’t any different to what they were when they were brought back in 2009 BUT the emphasis on how they apply these concepts has changed significantly. As times have changed, I’d argue the juries have helped restore at least some confidence in the importance of music and artistic integrity at Eurovision. This in itself has caused the juries to change subtly in their role. Instead of restoring the faith of disillusioned broadcasters in the contest and putting an end to block voting, the juries now seem to have a focus more similar to that of the Marcel Bezençon Awards. These awards are traditionally given out by the contest’s composers, commentators and press to songs for artistic interpretation and composition quality (sound familiar). Surprise, surprise the two winners of these awards this year (Switzerland and France) were the actual jury top two in the real contest.

Similarly, the EBU still have a strong emphasis (unsurprisingly) on keeping the contest free of corruption. However the means in which they do so now seem very different to 2009. It appears that they are less keen to distribute any sort of information on juries before the show now (a likely attempt to make it harder to target for bribery individuals who will have a significant impact on the results). However it is now also harder even after the jurors have been announced for transparency purposes, to see the reasoning behind the jury selection. In previous years full breakdowns of age, gender and occupation were provided – along with a clear indication of who the lead juror on each country was. Now the individual votes (including previous years on the official website) have all been made anonymous. Alongside this the EBU has not revealed the occupations, ages and genders of all the jurors. In theory this is all they need to but it simply isn’t possible to find readily accessible information for every jury to understand why they were chosen. Some work for record labels but that means they aren’t public figures who are going to have their age and gender publicly displayed for example. Others are not famous but rather fulfill roles in companies behind the scenes and even their job titles can’t be found out. This ultimately means that transparency has reduced, cause trust me I tried to find the average ages (which they used to publish every year) and it simply wasn’t possible.

Now I can finally talk about bilyi holos, or in other words the traditional “White Voice” folk singing from Eastern Europe. This style of singing is particularly interesting when it comes into the discussion around jurors and “vocal capacity” because the singing style is so different from others in a way that at first glance it may be presumed to be simply incorrect. This is because the style’s technique involves singing from the chest in a similar manner to shouting – you can see why this may be frowned upon by some classically trained singers immediately. Indeed, I believe Buck’s Fizz’s Cheryl Baker commented she found Shum (Ukraine’s 2021 entry consisting of white voice folk elements) to have been too shouty for her taste in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) coverage of the semi finals. Equally Cheryl Baker is a former Eurovision winner, who has had a very successful singing career. She is definitely qualified enough to sit on a Eurovision jury should she be asked, so do the juries still inevitably prevent certain genres from winning Eurovision then and solely due to cultural differences at that?

Still with me? You are doing well – thanks for sticking around!

Let’s take the two most talked about bilyi holos songs at Eurovision in recent years then and compare analyse how they did results-wise so we have some statistics to go off of. These are of course Shum (Ukraine, 2021) and Pali Się (Poland, 2019).

Song	Jury Points	Televote Points	Rank
Shum	97	267	5th
Pali Się	60 (SF)	60 (SF)	11th (SF) Non Qualifier

Two very different results then clearly! Poland completely failed to qualify with their bilyi holos song. Despite achieving the same amount of points from both jury and televote, this would have been enough for it to qualify had it been the televote alone voting, however. Shum on the other hand did really well, achieving a top ten result in the Grand Final from both voting parties. It is however very evidently apparent that on this occasion however, the televote significantly loved the song more than the juries. There is a whopping 170 point difference after all, which is more than the jury awarded the song in the first place!

So the first possible explanation for this is Shum was viewed a better song by the juries and so they thought it should qualify – that would mean this has nothing to do with bilyi holos at all. Whilst this is a possible answer, considering the televote still loved Shum significantly more than the juries, I think it is fair to assume more is at play here.

The next explanation is that juries struggle to appreciate songs from cultures and music industries dissimilar to their own, my hypothesis in many ways. Although a top ten in the jury vote still for Shum is a potential problem for this theory. It is possible that simply gaining high jury points from the countries that have the bilyi holos style native to them was enough to push them into the jury top ten but this doesn’t hold water when you consider the Belgian jury gave Ukraine ten points for example! As far as I am aware, the Belgian music scene isn’t known for its Eastern-European folk music to the point those jurors should instantly get it.

Maybe, some jurors this year happened to do more research on varying vocal styles and genres then in other years? It is certainly plausible albeit very unlikely to occur unprovoked. I don’t think that is what is going on here though, partially because if the EBU were promoting this you would expect all juries to vote for the song equally high.

My best guess? The trance/dance elements of Shum were enough to allow it to become accessible to some jurors who were unfamiliar with bilyi holos singing to the point that they voted for it. This would explain why Pali Się which did not have those elements did not manage to qualify with jurors. Of course this is merely speculation and hopefully we do see more representation of songs incorporating bilyi holos in future and can do a more scientific analysis but at least for now it is the best I have to go on.

This does however mean that the jury system is not managing to reflect all styles of music and as a result is falling foul to regional stylistic divides which look like block voting. Of course it can be argued that they are representing the cultures of their country but surely that defeats the purpose of Eurovision? If Eurovision is about sharing your culture with the world and the world can enjoy it then why should it being ‘new’ be an issue. After all Shum received high televotes and charted in many countries where the juries marked it down.

I also think it is about time I added further explanation to why I believe certain unexpected juries rewarding Shum highly is not simply down to multiple listens and understanding of the different vocal style but rather for respecting the other elements in the song. In every year it seems at least one juror hasn’t fully read the or understood the rules or voting methods of the juries – normally there are some drastically changing votes between the semis and the final and in other years juries have had to be disqualified for publishing votes and collaborating. For this reason I would be highly surprised if the EBU had encouraged delegations to push their jury into listening to and researching other cultures vocal techniques, as in 2021 jurors in some countries still seemingly managed to vote upside down or have a drastic change of heart (see twitter user @EuroBruno ‘s account for a full list). This would not only imply however that the juries were failing to understand certain genre but also that they were failing to read and understand the procedures by which they are expected to vote.

Further more it was a surprise to no one this year when the Greek and Cypriot juries exchanged top points with each other and whilst the juries are seemingly less swayed by regional voting patterns as diaspora vote isn’t so much of an issue, cultural effects are still present. Again this isn’t necessarily a problem, as music is a cultural thing in itself but if jurors are to be as fair and open-minded as possible it should not be the most important driving factor.

After reading all that you may well be thinking I am not an advocate for the juries but that couldn’t be more wrong! I really enjoy what they bring to the contest and I believe their role is of significant value to the contest. My criticism is whilst they have evolved slightly with the times, the time is right for them to refine their ruleset more. Personally, I’d like to see the EBU introduce any or all of the following:

1. Larger number of juries (if possible after negotiation with micro nations) to improve the diversity of opinions
2. Greater transparency following the contest on who the juries were – keeping them anonymous beforehand is probably a good call
3. “Vocal Capacity” should be considered in respect to the style of the song performed
4. The goals of the jury clearly set out to the public in advance each year
5. Clearer instructions for jury members, free of jargon and a confirmation step between submitting results with a clearly displayed “top” and “bottom” present
6. More engagement on official Eurovision social media as to how the voting process works

I think any of these could help improve the contest in the long-run and keep improving the beloved and commercially successful Eurovision franchise to thrive over the many years ahead.

If you made it this far wow! I’d be really keen to hear if you agree with any of this or not. Conversations are always open, just keep it friendly and I look forward to seeing you again here at ESC Essence.

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