Electric Fields will be making history at Eurovision this week (Picture: Nick Wilson)
Eurovision may have been running for 68 years now, but one act is about to make history by singing in their language for the first time.
Electric Fields – singer Zaachariaha Fielding and producer and keyboardist Michael Ross – are representing Australia at this year’s song contest, which is being held in Malmo, Sweden this week.
Performing together since 2015, the pair are the first duo to represent their nation since it was invited to participate nine years ago.
They’ll also be undertaking a world-first when taking to the stage by performing in an Aboriginal language.
Their song One Milkali (One Blood) incorporates both English and Yankunytjatjara; an Aboriginal language of the Anangu peoples, one of the oldest living cultures on earth.
Speaking to Metro.co.uk ahead of the first Semi-Final on Tuesday, the pair explained the significance of sharing this language on the world stage.
Singer Zaachariaha Fielding and producer and keyboardist Michael Ross are representing Australia (Picture: Nick Wilson)
‘I think it’s going to be a wonderful moment for the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara people and for Australia to showcase one of its oldest languages,’ Fielding, who hails from Mimili community on the APY Lands in far north South Australia, said.
‘It’s a proud moment for us to be doing it, but also for the country to see what you can do and how you can move an audience and make them feel happy and joyous.’
In 2019 Electric Fields narrowly missed out on representing Australia in that year’s contest, with Kate Miller-Heidke winning a public vote.
Why is Australia in Eurovision?
Australia was first invited to take part as a special ‘guest country’ back in 2015 as part of Eurovision’s 60th anniversary celebrations.
The invitation was extended to the country on the basis that they’re huge fans of the song contest, with the show having been broadcast on SBS there every year since 1983.
The participation was only ever meant to be a one-off, but they’ve been invited back ever since.
However, after being selected by broadcaster SBS to represent their country in 2024, the duo shared how One Blood was actually written when they were first looking at songs they could possibly compete with five years ago.
‘We wrote a lot of this song back in 2019 for Australia Decides and the Eurovision stage. If you listen to the opening lyrics “I stand in the eye of the spiral” it was a bit of a double entendre and standing in the middle of the Eurovision stage and we definitely had Eurovision in mind, but it had to be a theme and a philosophical comment worthy of this larger audience, because we wanted to use it for something we truly believed would have a positive impact and remembering the connection amongst humanity, whatever corner of the globe you are on,’ Ross explained.
‘We have been sitting on it for awhile but after this we are actually working on our debut album, so we actually have a lot of songs waiting in the wings, which we can’t wait to share.’
The song was originally inspired by a painting that Fielding’s father Robert had made titled Milkali Kutju, which symbolised non-indigenous Australians and Aboriginal Australians working together.
In Australia more than 250 Indigenous languages and over 750 dialects were originally spoken before colonisation, however only around 40 are still estimated to be in use today.
Indigenous languages in Australia comprise only 2% of languages spoken in the world but represent 9% of the world’s critically endangered languages.
Their song One Milkali (One Blood) incorporates both English and Yankunytjatjara, an Aboriginal language (Picture: Sarah Louise Bennett/EBU)
Being able to share it to an audience of over 160 million people is something not lost on the pair, who hope it could lead audiences to educate themselves further on Aboriginal language, history and culture.
‘The song will remain in its place and remain in its space, and do how it will move, whether it will be in this Eurovision platform or not,’ Fielding said.
‘It is a song that is supposed to challenge oneself to have a relationship with how it operates in the mind and how it wants to engage with the external world and nature and the facts of how we operate as earthlings.
The duo have been performing together since 2015 (Picture: Morgan Sette)
‘It’s a homework that everyone has to do. It’s one of the hardest things to do is learn about yourself but this song encourages for you to do it for yourself. And then you come to the collective.’
Ahead of the contest kicking off, acts have been urged by some to boycott it because of Israel’s inclusion due to the ongoing war with Hamas.
Asked where they stand on the Eurovision boycott, Ross said: ‘I mean, for us, you know, we believe that art is a place to build bridges with each other, and art is a place of healing.
‘When it comes to the really, really destructive, difficult elements of, you know, global ideas and global politics I mean, we can use art as part of the medicine, and we want to use this stage to sing about that we are connected as humans. I mean, we need to be reminded about that as much as possible.’
Before getting their chance in the Grand Final, the duo will have to make it through the first Semi-Final, during which UK entrant Olly Alexander is set to perform his song Dizzy.
At the time of speaking, Electric Fields hadn’t yet met him, but floated the idea of a future collaboration.
‘We haven’t seen him, but we are hoping to run into him in the hotel lobby and at breakfast to ask him to write a song together,’ they both said.
The 2024 Eurovision Song Contest will be broadcast on the BBC. The first Semi- Final will air on Tuesday at 8pm on BBC One.
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