Armenia will take part in “Eurovision 2006” song competition for the first time, which is going to start on May 16 in Greece. For this purpose a council was founded in the national TV building to decide the singer who is going to take part in the competition and the song to be presented.
Only 38 countries will be represented in Greece and this is a very good chance for us to make the reputation of our country go up. It is a long time that Eurovision has political meaning too and it decides the future appearance of the participating countries in the world. The recent winners of the competition were Ukraine (which was in the center of attention), Turkey (which tries to be involved in the EU) and Greece (which was involved in the EU in the same period). The general producer of “H1” TV network, Hrach Keshishyan said proudly that Armenia was the first country in Southern Caucasus to receive such an invitation due to the fact that the National TV Company became a member of the European broadcasting companies’ union. “Due to our good work we got a chance to take part in this competition”, he says. They have already decided who is going to be the participant (Andre) and the author of the song (Armen Martirosyan). Only those songs can be presented during the competitions which appeared in the recent months. As soon as they received an official invitation on December 26, they organized a competition. “The number of the presented songs was enough, there were 20 songs presented during the competition. These songs were sent form Gyumri, the USA, Echmiadzin and even from Sweden”, said Hrach Keshishyan. Although the song that is going to be presented has been elected, it still doesn’t have any words. The music is written by Armen Martirosyan and is called “Stay with me”. Andre will sing this song in English, but they will have the Armenian version too. Now the organizers are preparing some clips to present Armenia, as well as founding a new web page (www.eurovision.am). As for the singers, they are going to be evaluated by phone calls and the procedures will be clear soon.
“Eurovision is not a classical and deep musical competition, but a popular songs competition”, says H. Keshishyan. The singer must be a pop singer in order to sing the pop music well. Now the best pop singer of Armenia is considered to be Andre, who has been awarded best pop singer of Armenia twice. “Besides that he filled the first place in our program for the best pop singer of Armenia”, says the producer proudly. As a pop singer Andre feels that he has a huge responsibility. Andre’s behavior may help him during the competition very much, because according to their standards, behavior of singers on the stage is very important too. At first they pay attention to the appearance of the singer on the stage, than to the song. Anyway, both Andre and “H1” are satisfied. Andre seems to be more satisfied. It is worth to mention that there were other participants too: Sirusho seems to be very good for taking part in such competitions, because besides being beautiful she can also sing in English well. Inga and Anush Arshakyans are also taking part in this competition. As for them, they really sing well, are well-educated and it is very interesting to talk to them. Maybe for the first time it would be better of us to be presented by the strongest ones: by Inga and Anush Arshakyans. On the other hand maybe it was a good solution to agree with their standards and be represented by Andre. Anyway, “H1” television network has already made its decision and as Mr. Keshishyan says: “Andre will give a piece of our culture to Europe”.