Singing the Nation: Ukrainian Victories at the Eurovision Song Contest and the Politics and Musical Diplomacy (2004–2022)
Louisa Martin-Chevalier
louisa.martin-chevalier@sorbonne-universite.frSorbonne University (France)
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3754-1710
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.
Disclosure Statement
Keywords:
Eurovision Song Contest, Ukraine, cultural diplomacy, sovereign imaginaries, national identity, popular musicReferences
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Authors
Louisa Martin-Chevalierlouisa.martin-chevalier@sorbonne-universite.fr
Sorbonne University France
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3754-1710
Louisa Martin-Chevalier – Associate Professor at Sorbonne University, she has been on temporary assignment at CEFRES (French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences in Prague) since September 1st, 2025. She is initiating a wide-ranging research programme to examine the impact of exile on women’s artistic creation, with a particular Focus on the contemporary Ukrainian musical scene. She participates in several research program such as UkFeMM/Ukrainian Female Musicians and Migration and she is co Principal Investigator with Valeriya Korablyova of the TANDEM-CNRS-UK “A Subaltern That Sings: From Sound Resistance to Musical Diplomacy in Wartime Ukraine,” a collaboration between Charles University and CEFRES (Prague). She is also a member of ESCAPE, a 4EU+ Seed Funding project exploring the Eurovision Song Contest as a site of cultural diplomacy, identity formation, and European imaginaries.
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