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On the centenary of the genocide that scattered them across the globe, members of the Armenian diaspora have united for the country's Eurovision Song Contest entry. The concept of the song is so simple that any criticism it might court will only be seen as unfair aggression, British musical website The Quietus writes.

As the article has it, to mark the centenary of the genocide, the country has put forward the closest thing to an Armenian supergroup that they plausibly can with the English-speaking musicians at their disposal. The group called Genealogy is made up of six people of Armenian descent, five of them from different continents and, in the middle, one resident Armenian tying them together.

The track itself, a solid rock ballad, works pretty well even as a standalone pop song. The commission has already had to change the name of the song from “Don't Deny” to “Face The Shadow” because of protests from Turkey and Azerbaijan. The lyrics remain the same, of course, with a refrain endlessly repeating the original song name.

To the author of the article, the crowning achievement of the entry is its video. When the edit jumps away from the group themselves, there are shots of Armenian families gathering to have photographs taken in early 20th Century dress, mothers and their sons, idyllic shots of familial tenderness. As the chorus rings out for a second time, the people in the images fade away, leaving only empty chairs. It is visible absence. By the end of the fiddle solo, the chairs are full again, each member of the band occupying a space, staring defiantly back at the camera. The descendants of now invisible people, their very existence, like the food and language of a diaspora, is as radical a statement on the failure of their oppressors as is needed.

“And therein lies the genius. That these disparate people exist, gathered from all over the world, is a direct result of genocide, of fleeing in the face of mortal danger,” the article reads.

It is also noted in the article that in 2009 Azerbaijani authorities tracked down citizens that had voted for that year's Armenian entry by phone and questioned them on the grounds that their actions were unpatriotic.

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