This year Azerbaijan's public broadcaster İctimai TV internally selected Samira Efendi to represent Azerbaijan at Eurovision Song Contest 2020 in Rotterdam. Her name was shortened to Efendi when her song “Cleopatra” was revealed on 3/10/2020. Efendi means “Lord or Master” which goes with the song title if we consider Cleopatra as a female master. This also goes beyond gender boundaries as Efendi is always a male master in Eastern cultures. A nod to girl power?
Samira Efendi (Efendiyeva) is a 29- year- old young artist from Baku who attended several music schools since 2001. She competed at different competitions nationally including Yeni Ulduz (New Star) 2009, Buyuk Sahne (Big Stage) 2014 and the Voice of Azerbaijan (2015-2016- third place).
Internationally, in 2017 she competed in Silk way Star in Almaty, Kazakhstan and finished third. She was again in Kazakhstan in 2019 for Voice of Nur Sultan.
Eurovision Song Contest is her first big international challenge.
She has three singles so far: Yarimin yari, Sen gelende and Yol ayrici.
The song “Cleopatra “was written by Luuk van Beers, Alan Roy Scott and Sarah Lake and was produced together with Tony Cornelissen. There is not much of an information about the producers. I had to do some facebook research to get as much information as I could. It is a collaboration of Dutch, Spanish and Azeri (?) musicians. The song was presented by the producers as a project of many months of passion and hard work which came to life at Las Negras songwriting camp, Spain.
The song features three traditional Azerbaijani instruments which gives the song the local ethnic flavor.
Samira Efendi described the theme of the song quite eloquently and said:
“Cleopatra is a song about trusting your gut instinct, standing up for yourself and being a “queen” - even when things get tough and especially if someone betrays or hurts you. It is truly a song about freedom, a celebration of all cultures and all sexualities and it's a song that is meant to inspire people to be who they are and to be proud of themselves - just as Cleopatra was. She was a queen who went through love, heartbreak, and betrayal, but she stood up for herself and is now remembered as an icon of strength and femininity.”
The promo video is quite a production and words are not enough to describe this masterpiece. In my opinion though, it clearly was made with the idea of ”sex sells” .
In the middle of the song, there is an abrupt pause with a creepy male vocal (not sure if this is Samira herself) saying: Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō. This translates to Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra” / “Glory to the Dharma of the Lotus Sutra. These are apparently religious words chanted in Buddhism. The purpose of chanting is to reduce sufferings by eradicating negative karma along with reducing karmic punishments both from previous and present lifetimes with the goal to attain perfect and complete awakening (Source; Wikipedia).
The relationship between ancient Egyptian history and Buddhism needs to be determined.
In summary, Azerbaijan entry is very campy and sexy but also a total mess. It is a combination of traditional Azeri instruments, hip hop, booty twerk, dramatic Bollywood dance moves and so on. While trying to be multi-cultural, multi-sexual or multi-something, it feels like it is also becoming a mish mash, a hodgepodge. On the other hand, among many boring ballads this year, it is refreshing and fun, surely elevating my mood in the days of corona. I was in Baku last October just for 24 hours and loved every moment of it. I really would be happy to go back in 2021. Thank you and good luck Azerbaijan.
Here is a link to Voice of Nur Sultan 2019 -Samira Efendi- Yol ayrici