Ancient Song Traditions: KEiiNO & SPIRIT IN THE SKY at Eurovision 2019 - A Fantastic Song with Sami Joik Chants Wins the Televote

LATER ADDED NOTE (May 22, 2019): EXCELLENT ADDED BACKGROUND MATERIAL AND LINKS are found at Caroline Westbrook's article What is Joik, as heard in Norway’s 2019 Eurovision entry Spirit In the Sky? at Metro.co.uk where Westbrook writes:

"What is Joik, as heard in Spirit In The Sky? Buljo’s mid-song chant (fast-forward to 2:02 to hear it) is a traditional type of song performed by the Sami people – otherwise known as Lapps or Laplanders – who inhabit the Sapmi region, encompassing large parts of Norway and Sweden as well as northern Finland and Murmansk Oblast in north-west Russia. The sound, which has been compared to the chanting of some Native American cultures, is often deeply personal in nature, with each joik meant to reflect or evoke a person, animal or place. Eurovision aside, it’s found its place in popular culture, serving as inspiration for the likes of Disney’s Frozen – with the opening song, Vuelie, heavily influenced by Sami culture."

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/16/what-is-joik-as-heard-in-norways-2019-eurovision-entry-spirit-in-the-sky-9375648/?ito=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/"
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Now, to our original posting....
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For us, the top song of the 2019 Eurovision Song Sontest was Spirit in the Sky (Grand Final Version) by Norway's KEiiNO, a song which won the Europe-wide popular Eurovision televote. For the lyric version, see here.

As written at NewsInEnglish.no (make sure to read the whole article):

"No other country’s entry at the huge if hotly debated Eurovision Song Contest won as many votes from the public as Norway’s trio known as KEiiNO late Saturday night. Two of KEiiNO’s members are crediting their Sami colleague Fred Buljo for catapulting them from 15th- to 5th place in the finals....

KEiiNO singers Tom Hugo and Alexandra Rotan said on Sunday that they were “dedicating” what’s considered a respectable result at Eurovision to their fellow singer Fred Buljo, whose Sami heritage and Sami joik set them apart from all the other entries that often featured wailing vocalists and lots of pyrotechnics."

Fred Buljo is a star! Musically, on stage, he's got it. He sings
Joik viz. Sami joik, one of Europe's oldest song traditions!

As written at NewsInEnglish.no:

"“I’m very proud of my Sami background and culture,” said Buljo, who hails from Kautokeino in Norway’s northernmost county of Finnmark. “This shows that the joik, which is Europe’s oldest song tradition, touches people’s souls.” [emphasis added]
The United Nations is also honouring traditional languages of indigenous peoples this year, with Norway’s Sami Parliament (Sametinget) receiving NOK 1.1 million to boost exposure of the Sami language. “Now we can continue the work to strengthen languages under threat,” Buljo said, adding that he’s involved in production of a “concept album” featuring indigenous languages from around the world."

Norway had in fact already handily won the public vote in the 2nd semifinal sing-off prior to the grand final and could be viewed as the song which reflects the era of our life and times in our climate-change discussion age - an era of Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) caused by an active sun.

However, Spirit in the Sky was not greatly favored in the so-called jury vote of alleged professional "experts", whose vote in each country was counted as 50% of the "total vote", with the other 50% being comprised by the public vote.

Moreover, the foundation of the jury vote was not based on viewing the actual Grand Final performances of the 26 music participants, but rather on seeing the non-publicly available 2nd general viz. dress rehearsal prior to the Grand Final, which is not identical to the Grand Final, as changes are made. You can't make this kind of thing up. Basing 50% of the result of a finals race on a non-public evaluation of a preliminary heat? Not a good standard of judgment in our estimation. A final is always different than the prelims.

This strange system leads in each country to an extremely small not necessarily qualified group of people in a so-called "jury" picking their personal song favorites and, as in 2019, taking the win away from the most popular song in favor of some other song "technically" preferred as an individual matter of taste. Really, we could care less about a jury for music. The public buys music and listens to it. That should be the standard. The public vote, not a jury vote. Polls don't win elections, the actual VOTE OF THE PUBLIC does.

A good example of a jury in 2019 was Germany, consisting of only five persons - singers or people in the music business, with varying degrees of success.

NOTE:
The German public
in their Grand Final televote
picked Norway as the winner.

HOWEVER:
The German jury of five viewing the Dress Rehearsal
voted for Italy as the winner.

If the two are added, Italy then "won" the German vote, 18-17, as the jury did not vote well for Norway. Spirit in the Sky was a song that did not necessarily relate to the musical experiences of the German jury.

The net result of the Eurovision voting was that the Netherlands won the total vote, after winning neither the popular televote nor the jury vote overall.

Egad! What a potentially faulty system.

We repeat: For us, the top song of the 2019 Eurovision Song Sontest was Spirit in the Sky (Grand Final Version) by Norway's KEiiNO, a song which won the Europe-wide popular Eurovision televote. For the lyric version, see here.
There are several other versions available online at YouTube.

The Eye of Horus in the Stars Marked at Abydos as the North Celestial Pole

The Eye of Horus is marked in the stars at Abydos to represent the eternal celestial eye at the North Celestial Pole. This decipherment is more or less indisputable, given our previous postings. Abydos shows us the origin of this symbol as a "sky" marker and later hieroglyph, which points correctly to the right and not to the left as erroneously found in Gardiner's hieroglyph sign list.

The Eye of Horus in the Stars Marked at Abydos as the North Celestial Pole
(click on the graphic for a larger image in case your graphic appears too small)

 

Note please that this posting follows the immediately previous postings, which should be consulted for full understanding. For further background, see also my article The Origin of the Cult of Horus in Predynastic Egypt 

at Research Gate at the link
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265492234_The_Origin_of_the_Cult_of_Horus_in_Predynastic_Egypt.

The underlying star map above is via the astronomy software Starry Night Pro. We have added the labels and the drawing of the Eye of Horus within the stars.

Our drawing of the Eye of Horus above is based on an image online by Jeff Dahl at the link  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eye_of_Horus_Right.svg, Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0), who writes:

"Eye of Horus (right eye). Following the sources, it must be the right eye (the left eye that is the original image has another meaning)."

The Wikipedia writes at Eye of Horus:

"The Eye of Horus was represented as a hieroglyph, designated D10 in Gardiner's sign list. It is represented in the Unicode character block for Egyptian hieroglyphs as U+13080 (𓂀)."

The left orientation of Gardiner's D10 is in error.

In fact, the Egyptologists over time have gotten the Eye of Horus backward, facing left, when it should properly be shown facing to the right, as it is actually found in the stars.

It is only later that the original meaning of the hieroglyph to mark the North Celestial Pole became confused with Ra, after its true meaning had been lost.

As written at Ancient Egypt Online:

"According to later traditions, the right eye represented the sun and so is called the “Eye of Ra” while the left represented the moon and was known as the “eye of Horus” (although it was also associated with Thoth)." [emphasis added]

The Eye of Horus mirrors lines shaped by stars around "the eye" in heaven, but those lines were in all probability also intended to represent similar eyelines of the lanner or peregrine falcon. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus.

In any case, based on our decipherment as published in this posting, it is now possible to understand the initial significance of the Eye of Horus in the stars in predynastic Egypt at the inception of Pharaonic civilization. It marked the North Celestial Pole as the center of heaven.