MOLDOVA 2023

The Moldovan final "Etapa națională 2023" was held on March 4th at the TRM TV Studios in Chisinau. The winner was chosen by a 50-50 mix of jury and televote/online vote. Going to Liverpool is previous Moldovan representative and songwriter Pasha Parfeni with "Soarele şi luna" (The sun and the moon)

Pavel Parfeni was brought up around music; his mother was a piano teacher while his father was a singer and a guitarist and Pasha himself took up the piano. In 2002 he enrolled at Tiraspol Music College then continued his studies at the State Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts. He then became the singer of SunStroke Project and entered the race to represent Moldova at ESC 2009 coming 3rd. He then left the band to pursue a solo career. He returned to the Moldovan national finals in 2010 and 2011 but eventually won with "Lăutar" which came 11th in the Eurovision final. The next year he wrote "O Mie" for Aliona Moon. Pasha has dipped in and out of the Moldovan selection processes ever since as a songwriter and/or performer.

Pasha is joined on stage by two drummers and is sporadically joined by two antlered female backing singers and a male flautist. The stage is dark and atmospheric; the mood palette of the piece is muted and neutral until the end when a giant sun appears on the backdrop. The song starts with a tribal drum background a flute tune very low in the mix. Pasha sings whisperingly along with the drummers swaying with the music. The two female singers appear and the chorus starts. Pasha kicks towards the camera and behind him appears a flautist who dances around the stage. The beat is very prominent now and the singers reconvene to repeat the chorus again. There is then another verse then a slightly disjointed version of the verse before the flautist and heavy beat appears again. The music drops for a bridge which helps build the song back up for its final chorus to the end.

This song is strangely catchy, without being too in your face or earwormy. The choral nature of the chorus makes the different parts really stand out. The drums give the song a distinctive heartbeat and the flue part gives it a folky edge that their neighbours GO_A would be proud of. There were a lot of technical issues. in particular with the microphones which seemed to be set at the wrong levels. Half the time you couldn't hear Pasha sing and the backing singers sounded very loud. That said, one would hope better sound mixing and equipment would put pay to this in May. Although the stage in Moldova was basic, the stage show idea is extremely strong - the choreography is simple but strong and the costuming in particular is really effective.

Part of me thinks that this is the kind of sound that modern Eurovision is really into. It has echoes of acts such as Kalush, GO_A, KEiiNO, Manizha and Zdob și Zdub all of which have done well - most notably in the public televote. These acts have not only showed that folk electronica works but also that singing in a language that is not English is no barrier to success in this competition. Hopefully they will keep the essence of the stage show and just polish it up. I can imagine the audience waving their flags in time and jumping up and down to it. This will sail through to Saturday night barring a total fail in the vocals department and could be a low key televote winner. Probably won't win but may skew the vote enough to make for an exciting final!

ARTIST - Pasha Parfeni

SONG - Soarele şi luna"

WRITING/PRODUCTION CREDITS -  Pasha Parfeni, Yuliana Scutaru, Andrei Vulpe