The great favorite of the bets to win the crystal microphone confirmed all the forecasts: The Kalush Orchestra band have won the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest for Ukraine with their song ‘Stefania’!
In addition to the talent, the fascinating rhythms with the mixture of modern hip-hop with classic Ukrainian folk, the successful band unleashed a wave of sympathy this week at the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 as the representative of a country destroyed by the complicated situation that Ukrainians are suffering against the Russian invasion.
Kalush’s proposal has become a complete representation of the Ukrainian resistance despite the fact that the song festival tries to be on the sidelines of politics and its conflicts. Indeed, the Ukrainian delegation had to change its lighting, since in the first rehearsals it referred to the country’s flag.
However, everything in the Ukrainian proposal recalls the most characteristic features of the Ukrainian people. Some of the performers are wearing traditional historical costumes from the early 20th century: Oleh wore an authentic festive keepar, a vest of the Hutsul – an ethnic group from the Carpathian Mountains – to which he gives a modern twist, with a pink bucket hat and Tymofiy wore the full costume of the same traditional origin. ‘We’re showing off our roots, and we’re showing how to take something from the past and make it work for the present. That’s why we’ve found success at home, and we hope that we can find that sort of reception internationally, as well. We take something old, and we make it sound modern’, affirms the successful band to the official Eurovision website.
This is Ukraine’s third victory at Eurovision. The last one was achieved exactly on May 14, 2016, in Stockholm and the first came just one year after its debut in the European competition, in 2004 in Istanbul. On this occasion, the performance of Kalush Orchestra has been one of the most exciting of Eurovision 2022, thus achieving 631 points, of which 439 of them by the audience, the maximum awarded by the popular vote.
Visit HERE for more information on the latest news from the Eurovision Song Contest!
