Ukrainian jazz singer Jamala is getting ready for the biggest show in her 15-year career, and she admits to being nervous.
If she makes it to the finals in the Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm on May 14 (she’ll first have make it through the semi-final competition on May 12), Jamala will perform live to an audience of 200 million TV viewers around the globe.
To add to her anxiety, Jamala will not be performing a saccharine pop tune – the standard, kitschy Eurovision fare – but a sad and touching song called “1944.” It is also a personal one, as her family’s suffered under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatars.
Jamala’s family, like more than 230,000 other Crimean Tatars, was forcibly deported from Crimea to Central Asia on May 18, 1944. Nearly 100,000 Crimean Tatars died from starvation and disease from the dislocation, which Stalin ordered as collective punishment for the Crimean Tatars’ alleged collaboration with the Nazis, who occupied the peninsula during World War II.
“My great-grandmother, grandmother, grandfather and father used to tell me lots of times how it happened. At 3:15 in the morning they were told to get out, with only 15 minutes to pack,” said Jamala, 32, whose real name is Susana Jamaladinova. “The scene of forced deportation was before my eyes all the time when I was writing the song.”
She wrote it a year ago. It wasn’t easy for her.
“I cried hard a lot after I finished it. I couldn’t do anything,” Jamala said with a bitter smile.
Because of its topic, “1944” has stirred controversy abroad, and the international press has been clamoring for interviews with the Ukrainian singer. Jamala has already given interviews to the BBC, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Le Figaro, and Deutsche Welle, as well as to some Russian media.
“Their questions are similar – where I am from, why the song’s name is ‘1944,’ why isn’t much known about the Crimean Tatars’ deportation,” Jamala said, sipping her coffee as we sat in a restaurant in Kyiv on March 2. She had several more interviews scheduled that day.
Russian politicians have condemned her song for having a political theme, which is banned by Eurovision.
Russian lawmaker Vadim Dengin has even claimed that Jamala won selection as Ukraine’s representative for Eurovision through a rigged vote, with the aim of damaging Russia. The popularity of Stalin, who ordered the deportation, is rising in today’s Russia.
Jamala shrugs her shoulders at such accusations. She said the lyrics don’t have a single word about politics and Eurovision’s organizers have no complaints about the song. The European Broadcasting Union, which organizes Eurovision tweeted on March 9 that “the title and lyrics of the song don’t contain political speech and don’t breach Eurovision rules.”
“The main images of the song are the souls,” Jamala said. “I appeal to those who have forgotten even about the souls of those people” who were deported and died.
Initially Jamala wrote the song in Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar. Later, she translated it into English for the Eurovision national selection competition in Ukraine.
She finds it hard to talk about Russian-occupied Crimea these days. Jamala has visited her homeland only once since Russia invaded and annexed the peninsula in March 2014. She fears that if she makes more frequent visits it may harm her parents, who still live there.
“I don’t want any provocations. I don’t want to tempt fate. For me it’s important that my parents are not insulted,” she said.
Even though Jamala’s song concerns every Crimean Tatar family, the estimated 250,000 Crimean Tatars on the peninsula were not able to vote for her by SMS voting during the Eurovision selection competition in Ukraine, as Ukrainian mobile carriers are not allowed to operate on the occupied peninsula. Moreover, Crimean Tatars won’t be able to cast votes on behalf of Ukraine during the Eurovision Song Contest finals in Sweden this May.
“The votes cast during the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest from Crimea depend on the mobile carriers that are active in the region at that moment of time. This technical issue means that if Russian mobile carriers cover the area, then they will be counted as Russian votes,” Paul Jordan, the communications and online manager of the Eurovision Song Contest, told the Kyiv Post.
That upsets Jamala, who says that the Crimean Tatars feel abandoned.
“On the one hand, we say that Crimea is Ukraine, but on the other hand when they need to feel like they are a part of Ukraine we tell them ‘sorry,’” she said.
Jamala would not talk about how much it costs to prepare for Eurovision, saying only that her dress will be from a Ukrainian designer. Neither will she say what she thinks of her chances for winning.
“I believe I can win. I wouldn’t take part in Eurovision if I didn’t,” she said.
