🎙️🎶🎉🏆🇪🇺🇪🇬🕊️Eurovision is a world-renowned song contest where a single participant from each of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) countries performs a song in front of the global audience, and the country’s participant with the highest votes given by the juries and the general public (using televoting) wins the competition. The contest is held annually in the country which won the last edition of the contest in the previous year (so the winner has to host the contest for the following year). The goal of the competition is to unite the peoples of the different nations using music and singing. This was established as a main goal after a war-torn situation in Europe and the region after WWII, which made it necessary to create a platform to unite all the nations together with something that makes them all happy … and music was the answer and the cure for the soul! 😍👍
📺📻📡 Egypt is a member of the EBU and can participate in future editions of the contest if they choose to do so (which yet is not currently an interest, but might be in the future depending on the broadcasting rights and restrictions provided to participating members, the peace process outcome between the neighbouring countries in the South-Eastern Mediterranean, and the development of the contest over time). So, hypothetically, if Egypt joins the competition, what could we expect? Let’s explore in this article … 😊
What is Eurovision and how it works?
🕺💃🎇 The participating countries run a song contest locally between participants from the same country until a single champion wins the local competition. This person or band thus participates in the annual Eurovision contest on behalf of the country. Each participating country runs its own version of the local competition to promote a single participant from each country. The participants travel to the competition’s location and compete against each other in the semi-finals. The top participants winning in the semi-finals participate in the finals of the contest, which is broadcast live on all the member TV and Radio channels of the EBU. Each participant performs their song on stage live in front of the audience on the finals night and at the end the voters give points from 1-8, 10 and 12 to their favourite 10 performances. This happens by the juries consisting of music professionals from each country and by the general public from each country using televoting (sending short messages by mobile phones). The winner of the competition is the participant which collects the most points. Here is an example of the results and voting from the 2013 edition of the contest.
What is Eurovision in a nutshell? (by Paul from Geography Now channel)
How voting works?
Here are some samples of the competition to get an idea with examples …
2013 Eurovision Final Contest in Malmo, Sweden
The performance by Barei from Spain in the finals of 2016
The performances by Spain in the competition since 1961
Who would Egypt most likely vote for (and get votes back from) with 12 points from the EBU members?
🗳️🌊🙌 🇪🇬 Egypt’s culture is heavily affected by the Mediterranean culture and the Arabic cultures, so most probably it will vote for and get votes back from the Mediterranean countries and Arabic-speaking countries as they have strong bonds and similar cultures. This include the following nations:
- 🇨🇾Cyprus and 🇬🇷Greece
- 🇮🇹Italy, 🇪🇸Spain, 🇵🇹Portugal and 🇲🇹Malta
- 🇫🇷France
- 🇯🇴Jordan, 🇱🇧Lebanon, 🇹🇳Tunisia
- 🇲🇦Morocco, 🇩🇿Algeria, 🇱🇾Libya
- 🇦🇲Armenia, 🇦🇱Albania, and all countries of the former republic of 🇷🇸🇭🇷🇸🇮🇧🇦🇲🇰Yugoslavia
If Egypt wins the competition, where would they most likely host the competition?
🌞🏖️🎉⛵🌆🕊️ Egypt has a lot of wonderful touristic locations which could cater to the competition and all the participants, which include the following:
- Sharm El Sheikh: a famous touristic city on the Red-Sea full of nice beach resorts, a lot of night-life activities and many beautiful locations to visit (like safaris, St. Catherine monastery and many others…). Sharm El-Sheikh hosts annually a lot of international and regional events of the scale and size of Eurovision.
- Alexandria: Egypt’s cultural capital and largest city on the Mediterranean sea.
- Aswan / Luxor: peaceful beautiful cities in the South of Egypt on the river Nile with all the rich history of Egypt and a lot of touristic resorts and islands over the Nile.
- Cairo: Egypt’s bustling capital with all its good vibes, multi-cultural history & experiences, and friendly people.
Who might participate on Egypt’s behalf in the contest if it was today?
👨🎤👩🎤🇪🇬 Egypt already runs in many major local and Arabic-speaking song competitions (some allow performances in English) like “The Voice”, “Star Academy”, “Arab Idol”, “X-Factor”, and many others. So a candidate will most probably have competed in one of those competitions or would be promoted by a new made-up English-language competition to participate in Eurovision.
One of the emerging young artists would probably win the local competition in Egypt and run in the contest, including those candidates: 1. Nathalie Saba, 2. Carmen Soliman, 3. Lara Scandar, 4. Mohamed El-Sharnouby & Malak El Husseiny 😍
We will present below some sample songs by each of the expected participants in the competition.
1. Nathalie Saba
Snow (English, with some Egyptian tunes which are blazing from this track)
Young Hearts (English)
2. Carmen Soliman
Men Kol Makan (translates to “from everywhere”: Group song in English, Arabic from the annual World Youth Forum -WYF- hosted in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt)
Kalam Kalam (“chitchat” in the Egyptian language)
Habibi mosh habibi (“my love is not my beloved” in the Egyptian language)
Azama Ala Azama (“the amazing”: Group song in Arabic)
Cartoon Songs Medley (in the Egyptian language)
3. Lara Scandar
See the beauty (English with a verse in Arabic)
Taalou Ghannou Maaya (“come sing with me” in the Egyptian language, from the original “Lasciatemi cantare” Italian song by Toto Cutungo)
4. Mohamed El Sharnouby & Malak El Husseiny
I Dream of a World (group song in multiple languages from the annual World Youth Forum -WYF- hosted in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt)
Heta Men El Khayal (“fragment of the imagination” in the Egyptian language)
Malak El Husseiny The X-Factor solo audition (English)
Sample simulations online including Egypt
🔗🎹🖥️🖱️ A lot of Eurovision fans simulate the contest online and sometimes include Egypt in their fan pages. Here is what some of those fan pages presented for Egypt:
Egypt United – Voice of the pharaohs 