http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2613
By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin
Serbia is due to host the Eurovision song contest with a tune hailed as a gesture of nationalist defiance over the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3496.
The camp songfest has long dripped with barely-concealed political intrigue as countries vote for friends and neighbours no matter how awful their efforts.
Belgrade’s moment in the spotlight comes just three months after Serbia’s former province of Kosovo declared independence backed by most of the European Union.
Serbia has withdrawn its ambassadors from those countries which recognise Kosovo, and now Jelena Tomasevic, its Eurovision entrant, is to ram home the country’s disgust with her song ‘Oro’.
The lyrics of the song, one the favourites, apparently tell the tale of a pair of lovers, and end cryptically: “Wake me up on St Vitus’s Day, so that I can look at him again. Wake me up on St Vitus’s Day, so that I can see him one more time.”
The reference is unlikely to mean much to Eurovision’s huge international audience. But in Serbia, and throughout the Balkans, St Vitus’s Day, on June 28th, has a powerful resonance. It was on this day in 1389 that Serbs fought the Ottomans at the Field of the Blackbirds in Kosovo, a fight they cherish as a touchstone of Serb religion and nationhood.
Six centuries later, in 1989, Serb autocrat Slobodan Milosevic visited the site of the battle on St Vitus’s Day and, before an million-strong crowd, talked of Serbia regaining “its state, national, and spiritual integrity”.
“Six centuries later, now, we are being again engaged in battles and are facing battles. They are not armed battles, although such things cannot be excluded yet,” he said ominously.