The Eurovision Song Contes to get its museum

The modern museum exhibition is situated at the business center of Baku and is dedicated to the history of ESC, with special accent on Azerbaijan's participation in this contest. It will be opened and will receive its first visitors by mid-February. It is expected to be an indispensable tourist attraction for numerous guests coming to see the contest in May. Azerbaijanis still don't want to reveal the way they will present the fifty seven years long, rich musical history of ESC, but having in mind that this country is sparring no material resources for this occasion, we can certainly expect a most interesting project.

Most of Europe is not familiar with the rich cultural heritage of Azerbaijan, the country of poets and writers. But for those who are in the know, a museum inspired by music makes prefect sense as the legacy of this ESC year. This nation from southern Caucasus respects poetry and music very much. In fact, its cultural heritage had been passed through generations by means of music and poetry. The best proof of that are the mausoleum, museum and research center dedicated to the most famous poet of Azerbaijan, Nizami Ganjavi. This complex covers area of several hectares in the vicinity of Azerbaijan's second largest city - Ganja.

The new museum in Baku will be the most reliable guardian of the modern artistic treasure of the people of Azerbaijan. Victory in 2011 ESC, after only four participations, was perceived as a matter of national importance, so Azerbaijanis are working extremely meticulously on organization of this year's contest. At the same time, opening of this museum will put this year's ESC in a broader European context. Tourists from other European countries will also have the opportunity to visit the museum after May of this year.

The upcoming opening of the ESC museum in Baku also serves as an inspiration for Euro song time machine, taking us back to the very beginning of this event and the idea of Marcel Bezençon. He proposed organizing a pan-European festival of pop music that would be a counterpart of the popular Italian music festival in San Remo.

The history of the ESC is rich and, above all, interesting. It all began on May 24^th 1956 with the contest held in Lugano, whit participation of only seven countries: Italy, Germany, France, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium and the host - Switzerland.

It was the only time when each country was represented with two songs, and there had been no limitations concerning duration of compositions, the language of interpretation, or number of interpreters on the stage.

The tune which opened the festival in Lugano "De vogels van Holland" performed by "Jetty Pearl" entered history only because it was the first ESC number. It informed the audience that Dutch birds are the most musical birds in the world.

The first representative of former Yugoslavia at the ESC was Ljiljana Petrović. She took eighth place in 1961 in Cannes in France. The title of the song, with lyrics written by Miroslav Mika Antić, was „Neke davne zvezde".

Most certainly, a special place in the ESC museum will be reserved for the famous song "Waterloo", performed in 1974 by the most renowned ESC participants, the Swedish band "ABBA". Numerous ESC fans around the world consider it to be the best ESC song of all times. Although this legendary group has plans to open its own museum in Stockholm, its opening is being delayed for five years now.