The song “New children” has a strong message that speaks about new and modern generations that are able to change the world into a better and more beautiful place, where love and peace leads. The reggae arrangement of the song happened spontaneously during the group’s studio session and they decided to leave it that way.

The author of the English lyrics is Serbian producer, songwriter and artist Luke Black whose song “Demons” was one of the potential representatives for Serbia in 2016.

Sanja Ilic & Balkanika will perform third at the second semi final on May 10th. They will perform the Serbian version of their entry on the Eurovision stage with 6 performers - three female vocalists, one male vocalist, a percussionist and a flute player. They will wear costumes by Serbian fashion designer Nevena Ivanovic (Neodesign) and choreography will be by Milan Gromilić. They will also work with director Gorčin Stojanović, who made the winning Eurovision performance of Marija Šerifović with song “Molitva” in Helsinki.

Video:

Follow Sanja Iić & Balkanika:

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www.sanjabalkanika.com

Some very quick highlights around the Altice Arena and downtown Lisbon today, also some info on how the metro works, how long it takes and beer in Euroclub :-)

The Serbian representatives, Balkanika, give a short interview and perform an acoustic version of their song at a charity event before heading to Lisbon

Also attending was last year's representative Tijana Bogićević

The Eurovision 2017 is over. Thanks to all team members and contributors who worked hard to provide the most comprehensive coverage of the contest in the web. As usual, we were the only media that has provide throughout coverage of the events not only in the press-center, but in the Euroclub, Eurovillage, national parties and receptions as well as fan zones. And first of all thanks to our readers, without whom we would have been unable to exist.

Despite various difficulties Ukraine managed to pull good organization of the contest, which although can't be compared with the great Stockholm and Vienna has been on par with 2012-2014 years.

A highlight of the event was Eurovillage - we have never yet seen so packed Eurovillage with various activities and concerts, add that 5 hospitality zones made up by Kyiv city - so locals must have enjoyed the contest greatly. A slight downside perhaps has been difficulty to get hour by hour schedule of the Village and Fan zones to follow.

Euroclub, while starting on a low note, eventually was transforming into a nice location. Still, the idea to sell openly passes to the Euroclub (not speaking about loads of people appearing there even without any passes) is definitely not doing any benefits to delegations being interested to be present there and perhaps it is time to return Euroclub to the original concept of a night location of the accredited people only, at the same time offering night-time Euro Fan Cafe or other clubs as venues to non-accredited fans.

Red Carpet has been OKish, even though perhaps very few people from press and delegations understand what is the real need in this event, especially when the access of non-accredited fans to it has been largely limited for the security reasons. The country-zones obviously have not worked at all, and length of the carpet can't be considered a good thing as well.

The events schedule during the week in Kyiv hasn't been extremely exciting, still offering something to everyone, and for example I have visits to Sing, Lola, Sing musical with amazing Oksana Zhdanova, play of my favourite actor Alexey Gorbunov, performance of Ultramarine Girls cover band with Galina Scoda as three event highlights of the week.

Press-center has been very convenient to work and besides few issues which were addressed and solved immediately our home for 2 weeks has been very friendly. I have nothing bad to say about team of volunteers this year, who have been largely unnoticeable - which is the most essential feature for volunteers, they should help when approached and not to interfere in the work. Security has been most friendly and approached everyone with a smile, and considering high security alert during the contest, it ensure a feeling of safety.

Many thanks go to the Ukrainian Eurovision team: Yulia Golovlyova, Olena Gamulya, Svitlana Melnichenko, Ludmila Troyitskaya, Angelina Lazebna, Liliya Yamborak, Tatiana Gosteva. Special thanks to Roman Keryk and Premier team.

Now it is time for us to take a rest after a very long season that has started for us already in summer with coverage of Ukraine's preparations. ESCKAZ will be back to the coverage of Portuguese preparations in winter.

Finally, you can check again our coverage (675 produced videos) in several playlists:

Interviews:

Euroclub:

Eurovillage:

Other events:

Rehearsals:

Press-conferences:

Opinions:

Ok so we came with open hearts and leave with a smile for Portugal and their first win in 500 million years (!!!!) at Eurovision - it’s been a blast - with very big highs, such as the Red Carpet Event, and some very horrible lows, such as missing an interview with France the whole time we were here.

The shows were ok in the end, but without the luxury of watching them back on TV yet we may amend our views on how Kyiv as a host city performed in the most important aspect - the tv!! On the other hand Kyiv itself has transformed from 2005 into a reasonably progressive city. Yes there are still huge issues with corruption here, some strange attitudes to certain things, prostitution is rife and everywhere but all in all it was fun and enjoyable

We missed a lot of the normal crowd that also come to Eurovision - some dear friends skipped this year - but we hope that they will be back for Lisbon and bring their unique slant on the coverage of Eurovision.

Time to go home now and back to reality in the harsh light of Post Eurovision Depression syndrome - still the summer is coming and before w know it Albania will be having their National Final and the whole merry go round will start again

Heading into town now for one last look around and some food and maybe a goodbye from us clip…check back later for that - I’ll add it to this post if we do that

Thanks for watching see you all in Lisbon

Well it's Bulgaria's to lose really

But still hoping for Italy to win

Last night, while the jury final for this year's grand final Eurovision took place, there was also a very special night in the Euroclub. As you may well know, since a couple of years the organisation uses local stand-in artists for the first rehearsals, without the actual performers from each country having to travel to the host country. This makes it possible to have reduced rehearsal times as we now have had for a few years now. For the stand in rehearsal each chosen stand in practices the lyrics, vocals and choreography, to perform as much as possible like the 'real' artist will do as we can all see in the semi-finals and/or grand final.

It's also been a tradition that these stand ins get to perform for an audience in some sort of way during the Eurovision weeks. From when it started, I've always looked forward to seeing those performances, as some of them are surprisingly good, so I was very eager to see how Ukraine had handled this subject. I was very impressed with the general vocal level of each artist and most of them are also really good performers.

Apart from singing Eurovision songs from this year, some if not most of the singers treated us as well to ESC-songs from earlier years, national final songs and/or well-known international or Ukrainian hits. That is the only thing I would've liked to see differently, there are 42 participating songs in this year's Eurovision so would've loved to see more of them, maybe also the duets and bands, and songs in other languages than English. However, lots of respect and well done to all six performers who took the stage in the Euroclub last night and who knows we'll see them back some year in a national final!

Some of Eurovision fans may remember Galina Scoda - participant of Moldovan 2008-2010 national preselections with such songs like "Your Own Vision", "Joc De Noroc" and "Actori".

Since 2010 Galina has moved to Ukraine, where she starred in various plays of Musical Theater "Comme il faut".

Since 2010 she sings in cover band "Some like it hot", which has in 2014 been renamed into "Ultramarine Girls"

This year, Scoda has completed in the Ukrainian version of The Voice.

Attempting to cover everything Eurovision related, ESCKAZ could not miss performance of Galina Scoda and Ultramarine Girls (Maria Sorokina, drums, Marta Kovalchuk, bass, Uliana Guda, keyboards). We were looking for suitable dates throughout the week and eventually managed to catch them in Solod enjoy bar.

Having a brief chat with Galina after the performance, we have let her know she is being missed in the Eurovision world and we would be happy to see her again running in the national preselection in Ukraine or Moldova. Hopefully, composers and producers pay attention to her fantastic abilities. Band's website: https://ultramarinegirlsband.com/