Singing the Nation: Ukrainian Victories at the Eurovision Song Contest and the Politics and Musical Diplomacy (2004–2022)
Singing the Nation: Ukrainian Victories at the Eurovision Song Contest and the Politics and Musical Diplomacy (2004–2022)

Summary/Abstract: This article examines how Ukraine has transformed the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) into a platform for cultural diplomacy and sonic sovereignty. Combining musicological analysis with perspectives from cultural studies and political sociology, it explores three emblematic entries—Ruslana’s Wild Dances (2004), Jamala’s 1944 (2016), and Kalush Orchestra’s Stefania (2022)—to investigate how musical performance articulates changing forms of national identity, historical memory, and geopolitical positioning. Drawing on the works of Dean Vuletic, Maria Sonevytsky, Marko Pavlyshyn, and recent scholarship on participatory diplomacy and nation branding, the article argues that Eurovision has become a site where Ukraine negotiates its place between post-Soviet legacies, postcolonial emancipation, and European aspirations. Rather than expressing a fixed national identity, Ukrainian Eurovision performances reveal how cultural identities are continually imagined, contested, and reinvented through sound, performance, and transnational circulation.

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