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Cl�udio Silva [52446]

Sat 22 Nov 2008 13:48:59

Hello European friends,

My name is Cláudio and I’m writing from Portugal.
In the last few days, I have been visiting this website to read the news about Portugal’s entry for the next Eurovision Contest. Unfortunately, for my sadness, I was confronted with so many wrong ideas and opinions about my country and its participations in the ESC.

Some people say that our songs are so bad that shouldn’t qualify to the final, some other people even call our entries “boring”. In the middle of all these ideas, I ask myself “what this people know about music?”

The Eurovision Contest should be an opportunity for countries to show, through the music, their history and culture to the rest of the world. I am very proud to be able to affirm that Portugal always respects its history, culture and language. We are one of the few countries that still participate with their mother language, in our case the Portuguese. Even France is now participating with songs in English, something completely out of sense. I must say, Portuguese is not a language that many people understand and it’s not easy to learn, although it is the fifth most spoken in the world, and it will be the language with the fastest development in the future. To understand our songs and their meaning you must have some notions about Portugal’s history, culture and language, other wise it will be difficult for you to like our music. This is the main reason why so many people say “the Portuguese song is so boring, I don’t like it…” the song isn’t boring, you just don’t understand it…I have some friends around the world and the majority of them loved the Portuguese entry in this year’s Eurovision Contest. I was confronted with so many compliments “your song is amazing, I unfortunately don’t understand Portuguese but, the melody is so beautiful and Vânia has amazing vocals”.

Fado is our most known style of music, it’s part of our history, culture and image, just like Tango from Argentina, Samba from Brazil, and Jazz from the United States. And all this is what makes me proud of my country, because all these years, we have shown respect for our name “Portugal”.

If you didn’t know, the song “Senhora do Mar” was the media’s favourite, all the journalists and TV commentators said “Portugal is the real winner of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest”.
Why would they say something like this, if the song wasn’t really that good? For compassion?
Perhaps they were feeling sorry for Portugal…“God, poor guys, they never win this thing…what is this called?...the Eurovision Contest?...Yes, ok…let’s say something positive about them, just so they can have a reason to be happy”. I don’t think so, remember, Portugal is the ugly ducky in Europe, no one feels sorry for us.

Another excuse that most of the people use is the absence of originality in our entries “Portugal’s songs are so old, it’s always the same thing, they need something new, something original…” Ok then, let’s see the originality of some countries like Sweden, Finland and the marvellous United Kingdom…

Sweden, the same dance music style for the last couple of years, with Charlotte Perrelli being the queen of the disco.

Finland, the Hard Rock and Heavy Metal sound. How many times they have participated with that style of music? Oh, I have lost myself in the middle of the calculations…

United Kingdom, well I absolutely loved their entry. Andy Abarham has a nice voice and the song was sweet and perfect to live happy moments with our friends…but, what about the originality? Well, if Seal was never born we could say their entry was original…but since he’s pretty much alive, we don’t find any originality in the British entry.

Wait a second, I’m forgetting some one, oh yes, Greece with their European version of Miss Britney Spears. Kalomoira is a beautiful and sexy girl, but just like Britney, she can’t do anything without the help of her back-up singers, whose voices are much stronger than Kalomoira's.

Now that I wrote the word “back-up”, I have remembered something…Did you know that Turkey didn’t vote for Portugal in the telephone voting, but the Turkish back-up jury gave Portugal 10 points? It’s so interesting to find out about these things…imagine how many votes Portugal received from all the back-up juries? And now, imagine in which position Portugal could have been if the votes were just given by juries? Amazing, isn’t it?
We probably could have won…

Also good to know is the fact that Portugal didn’t qualify to the final with the help of the jury. Portugal got the second place with 120 points in the semi-final, and the jury’s choice was actually Sweden, who didn’t get points enough to pass the final with the televoting results.

In order to finish my message, I just have to say that I feel sorry for some people who don’t know what they are saying when they decide to write something in this website. Describing ideas and opinions about music without having notions of what real music is about, just shows how pathetic people can be. Remember, just because you appreciate different styles of music from the ones we have in Portugal, it doesn’t mean that you have the right to call our entries “bad” or “poor”.

What do you know about Portugal and music to be able to evaluate or judge our songs?

I wish you all a great weekend.

Cláudio Silva

Mischa Conzen [24211]

Thu 20 Nov 2008 19:38:06

Polls will close this Friday, 21st November ???

It already tells me right now, that the polls are closed ...