One of my favourite Eurovision genres is Coven.
You know what I mean. Picture a group of people on stage – usually women, usually from Eastern Europe, usually upholding a longstanding choral tradition, usually not performing in English, usually singing about nature – and absolutely killing it.
These songs entrance the audience, or at least me. Tulia from Poland performing Pali Sie. France’s Alvan and Ahez performing Fulenn. Go_A performing virtually anything. One might even extend the witchiness to Pasha Parfeni’s Soarele Si Luna.*
This year, the Coven slot is filled by Latvia’s Tautumeitas, with their song Bur Man Laimi, which translates to “Curses and Hexes.” (They are SO leaning into it!)
The first time I heard this song, I was not impressed. I thought it lost steam about two minutes in, and just ended up with a random floaty vocal solo near the end.
But for the next week, I found myself singing “Bur man bur man bur man bur man nevar manis izpostīt” over and over again. And by the time they got to the final of Supernova, I was completely sold. Here’s their national final performance:
It’s worth watching their official music video as well, as it simply reinforces the perception that Tautumeitas are going off into the woods to cast some spells before coming home and watching Markus Riva host Latvia’s X-Factor:
The song has a pretty straightforward nature theme – the ladies from Tautumeitas are casting curses and hexes to help the trees in the forest grow, as these are going to outlast any of the structures constructed by humans out of puny building materials like steel. Metal rusts! Trees don’t!
But the lyrics to the song, while interesting, aren’t what sells me on the song. It’s the magic in the music itself – the interplay in their voices, and how they overlap with the drums. It all seems very primal and timeless, like Bur Man Laimi was a song they learned from the women in their villages, rather than something written for Eurovision.
The look of Tautumeitas plays into this as well. With their long hair and flowing dresses, they seem to come from a different time and place, as if they don’t quite belong in the Riga of today. And it’s not like they’re going for a tradwife aesthetic either – they’ve just got an earth mother vibe about them.
Well, almost all of them.
There’s the lone Tautumeitas member with the girlboss bob. I can only imagine the film waiting to be made about her – the high-powered, big city event planner/lawyer/bakery owner who somehow got stranded in a small village and recruited into this nature-worshipping cult. I just can’t decide whether it would be a Hallmark movie romance where she falls in love with a forest ranger who’s the brother of the rest of the band, or a five-part documentary expose about the cult.
*I’m not extending the Coven title to Vesna’s My Sister’s Crown because while it fulfills many of the requirements, it’s more about female empowerment and sisterhood rather than getting freaky with ancient rituals in the woods.
dudepoints.fun 