TALLINN - Any Western Europeans still jittery about letting all those "developing" former communist states join the EU this spring will no doubt keel over dead when they see Estonia's entry into this year's Eurovision qualifier.
Wearing quasi-Neolithic dresses with knives on their belts, dancing in animal-skin boots and singing in an obscure regional dialect, the five young women who make up the group Neiokoso took the Eurolaul, Estonia's national Eurovision final, by storm with their unusual, upbeat ethno-pop song, "Tii" (Roads).
The tune, which sounds something like an old village folk song with a much faster tempo and heavy drumming, was the public's clear favorite even though the lyrics are in Voru dialect, a hard-to-understand southeastern variation of Estonian.
The song had to be subtitled just like the eight entries that were performed in English, but this didn't stop it from garnering 8,696 televotes, nearly half of the 19,478 votes phoned in during a five-minute period of the Feb. 8 broadcast.
Despite the triumph for national pride however, troublesome technical failures, both with the broadcast and the televoting system, cast a shadow over the event.
The show started off predictably enough. The authors and performers of the 10 final songs gathered at Estonian Television (ETV) studios and were huddled onto a Turkish-themed studio set, a nod to this year's Eurovision host, Istanbul. Scantily clad belly dancers competed with the presenters for the camera's attention while nervous contestants sat among walls of shiny, purple streamers that could have easily come in a crate marked "Euro-glitz."
And it seemed that all of Estonia's usual Eurovision suspects had returned. Past winners, past runners-up and song-writing teams were shuffled around in different combinations this year, but the result was the same - the standard parade of silly costumes, short dresses and ballads cheesy enough to make a grown European cringe.
All went well until the fourth song, "Whatever you Say" performed by Charlene, when a computer failure at ETV caused a series of one-to two-second broadcast blackouts. The problem cropped up again in the ninth song, and a final time, most embarrassingly, just as ETV's Eurovision head Juhan Paadam had come onto the show to apologize for the problem and offer the affected performers another go, an offer that Charlene took up.
What could have more serious implications though are the televoting problems. Elion, responsible for the voting system, estimates that 25 percent - 30 percent of people who tried to call in their votes during the allotted five minutes couldn't get through, which later led to considerable grumbling and talk of formal protests by some of the runners-up. Given the representative nature of the voting problem and Neiokoso's overwhelming win, however, it's unlikely that any protests will change the result.
At the afterparty in ETV's cafe, Neiokoso member Astrid Boning expressed surprise and jubilation at the result. "Of course, we are very happy about this;" she told The Baltic Times. "I've never been to Istanbul," she said.
One figure likely to get more attention as the May 12 qualifier approaches is the group's dynamic and larger-than-life drummer, Peeter Jogioja. A former member of Ultima Thule and Compromise Blue, he cuts an unforgettable profile with his huge build, pointed beard and two tufts of hair made into devil horns.
"I usually break symbol stands with my one-fist punch, but for this occasion, I was forbidden to do anything irregular," he said, pointing to his scars.
He admitted that the Neiokoso singers have to work on their choreography, which many observers point out is their weakest area. The Baltic Times decided not to discuss this complaint with the singers though. Criticizing women who carry sharp blades is never a good idea.
