National Harmony? Not in This Contest

A poisonous atmosphere had enveloped the song contest here before any singers took the stage. Serbs complained that No Name's song included a prelude resembling a Montenegrin nationalist anthem. There were also suspicions that, at contest finals in Athens, No Name would change their lyrics to urge Montenegrins to vote for independence. The finals take place a day before the May 21 referendum.

Under European Union rules for the referendum, 55 percent of voters have to approve independence for Montenegro to bolt from Serbia, and at least 50 percent of eligible voters must participate. The E.U. wanted to make the measure comparatively hard to pass, out of a feeling there are already too many Balkan ministates. About half the population is Serb.

The United States has said it would accept the results.

Like the song contest, the referendum is already the subject of fraud allegations. Serbian television broadcast a videotape purporting to show pro-independence Montenegrin activists trying to bribe a man named Masan Buskovic to vote for independence in return for payment of his $1,900 electric bill. The activists say they were victims of a sting and a doctored video.

In Belgrade, the Flamingos remain sour over the whole contest. "Unfortunately, political games ruined our chances," Ognjen Amidzic, the Serb Flamingo, said.

Marinko Madzgalj, the Flamingos' Montenegrin, said the whole spirit of the contest was subverted. "It was ugly. Unexpected. I am somewhat bitter because the contest, usually filled with fun, turned into something totally different, something that has nothing to do with music," he said.

The Eurovision Song Contest, which debuted in 1956, was beset with controversy from the start. Swiss judges, replacing a pair from Luxembourg, tilted the vote toward -- guess who? -- the Swiss winner.

In 1969, Austria refused to participate because Spain, then under the rule of Gen. Francisco Franco, was the host country. Four years ago, the manager of Germany's entry was discovered buying up copies of the performer's records to persuade all of Europe that she was a popular phenom. In the same year, a Slovenian politician panned the country's own entry as a symptom of a "crisis of values." The group called Sisters was composed entirely of male transvestites. Israel's 1998 winner, Dana International (aka Sharon Cohen, and before that, Yaron Cohen), was a transsexual labeled an abomination by rabbis back home.

Last year, Ukraine's song was deemed too political -- it extolled the anti-Russian Orange Revolution -- and had to be changed. There's controversy over this year's Armenian entry, Andre. He has listed himself as a native of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenia wrested from neighboring Azerbaijan in the 1990s. Thousands of Azeris fled what is now an Armenian-controlled enclave deep inside Azerbaijan; the Azerbaijan government says that either Andre identify himself as from Azerbaijan or drop Nagorno-Karabakh from his biography.

In any event, Eurovision in the Balkans seems to have had one uplifting outcome spanning the region's ethnic divides. This year's Bosnian entry, sung by Hari Mata Hari, a Muslim man born Hajrudin Varesanovic ("The Nightingale of Sarajevo"), was composed by Zeljko Joksimovic, Serbia's Eurovision contestant in 2004.