World Song Contest

72 countries took part in the last edition of 2008. An edition which proved to be one of the closest ever. It could be weird to some people that 37 countries took part in the final, two more than what we can expect. But once again, the jury took a decision which led to that. Not that they couldn't agree on which songs had to qualify, but because only two players finally took part in the meeting, and that both of them decided not to help their song to qualify. This was seen as a positive sign of what WSC should be, instead of a war of words in the guestbook, so it was decided they should be rewarded as an example. That's why both Venezuela and Slovakia were qualified for the final.

This time, we also saw that Eurovision stars could easily qualify, like Shiri Maimon for Israel, or easily fail, like Helena Paparizou for Greece. It was the first time that Greece was represented by a song performed in another language than English or Greek... as this time the song was performed in... Swedish, which created something cold in the voters ears. But if Greece failed to qualify with a song performed in Swedish, it seemed that French was once again helpful as songs performed in that language found their way to the final. Even Andorra, which was rewarded with 12 points from Belgium and Quebec in the final.

The winner of this edition had to wait until the last vote before we could tell it was the winner. 5 points separated the song which came 1st to the one which came 5th. Among them, Belarus and China which were not used to that kind of result. Despite the fact this country already won, Portugal also did better than usual while France and United Kingdom, with Duffy, were once again among the favorites to win. China finally won with three points over UK. It was the first victory for China thanks to Sa Dingding and the song "Mama Tian Na (Lama Chenno)". Unfortunately for Saint Kitts and Nevis, it was a really different story as the country scored the lowest score ever with only 1 point received from Poland. Before this edition, the record was hold by the United Kingdom, with 3 points after a penalty of 50% in WSC .16.

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Sa Dingding is a Chinese folk singer and songwriter. She is of mixed Han and Mongolian ancestry, and sings in languages including Mandarin, Sanskrit, Tibetan, a near-extinct tongue Laghu, as well an imaginary self created language to evoke the emotions in her songs. She also plays traditional instruments such as the guzheng and matouqin (horse-head fiddle). Born in Inner Mongolia, Sa Dingding was influenced by the music of the ethnic minorities while living with her grandmother in Inner Mongolia until the age of 6. She also became interested in Buddhism and taught herself Tibetan and Sanskrit. Later on, she moved to Beijing to study philosophy and music at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music. By the time she turned 18, she released her first album entitled Dong Ba La under the name 周鹏 (Zhou Peng), awarding her with the title of China’s Best Dance Music Singer. In 2006, "Holy Incense" was used as the theme song for the movie Prince of the Himalayas, directed by Sherwood Hu. In mid-2007, she released Alive, now available physically and as a download in many countries. The Hong Kong release of the album features a DVD containing music videos, a remix of "Alive", making of footage and a Chinese version of "Mama Tian Na", not featured on the album. In 2008 she won the BBC Radio 3 World Music Award for the Asia-Pacific region, as well as releasing a two track single called Qin Shang. Most recently, Dingding has appeared at Womad and the Harrogate Festival in the UK. Dingding composed a song with Eric Mouquet of Deep Forest called "Won't Be Long" to raise funds for disaster relief after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The song was made available on Mouquet's Deep-Projects website. Mouquet and Dingding have collaborated on a forthcoming album Deep China. Her latest album, released in January 2010 is Harmony (天地合), with nine songs in Chinese. The album also contains three remixes of the title track, one by Paul Oakenfold.