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Matthew Vella
Grace Borg can admit to enjoy being in control. Her fallout with the Maltasong board, the committee which organises the Song for Europe festival that sends hopefuls to the Eurovision kitsch-fest, is certainly witness to her demanding character.
With Maltasong off her list of commitments, she returns to take care of business where she left it, running her little empire from an office offering little glamour, if not for a large big-screen TV: everywhere else is stacked up by dozens of boxes, CDs, DVDs, and video games. Now she will be going back to her anti-piracy crusade, years having been spent fighting the black market of CD and DVD sellers.
Her resignation from Maltasong crowns a long feud between her and the association of Maltese composers and authors (Unjoni Kompozituri u Awturi Maltin). Borg wanted foreign composers to be allowed to pen song for Maltese vocalists. UKAM would have none of it, even threatening to boycott’s 2004 festival. The cast rested on a reciprocity clause proposed by Minister Francis Zammit Dimech: if foreigners are to be allowed write songs, their countries’ authorities must offer similar access to Maltese composers.
But Borg’s views about the unwillingness of her former board colleagues to step out of line with the ministerial diktat, her description of new Maltasong chairman Robert Abela as “a minister’s man”, and her belief that Maltasong can do well with just three people on board, say much about her way of doing business.
This is after all the woman who had asked the Prime Minister on his mobile phone whether he would send over a plane to Kiev to get the triumphant Eurovision party back to the island, in the early hours of the morning.
Borg’s fallout comes after an attempt this year to simplify the reciprocity clause. UKAM, she claims, “wanted to close doors”. The association in effect wanted to allow only those foreigner composers whose countries operate a similar entry system as Malta’s to elect their Eurovision artists, by holding a festival system.
In reality, what the reciprocity agreement which even Zammit Dimech stood by steadfastly reveals, is that Borg’s boardroom revolution this year could have been aimed at curbing UKAM’s say in the affairs. According to the agreement, UKAM would have to be consulted on the matter, although the board decision would still be final on whether to allow foreigners write songs or not.
So was her bone of contention having to deal with UKAM? “It’s not that I didn’t want UKAM. But I did not want to give them any airs, and that if they disagree with us we would clash with them. I didn’t want them to use such a scenario to blackmail us by threatening to boycott the festival.
“Some countries hold festivals, but these are few. Others choose the singer, others still choose them if they have ranked in the music charts. I only wanted to say ‘no’ to those countries which would not allow any Maltese composers enter their competitions outright, mainly Eastern bloc countries. I wanted to keep it clean, and basically say no to those countries who say no,” Borg says.
Her resignation made public during a press conference, carried little sign of respect from her Maltasong colleagues, who weren’t even present. Were they their friends after all?
“No they aren’t. This board, like many government boards, is full of people appointed not on the basis of merit but because they are friends of the ministers… Robert Abela was a board member who didn’t even come to our first meeting. He has just said he is going to ‘pick up the pieces’. What pieces?”
So why the antagonism? “When you have a ministerial representative with you, few people will have the guts to say what they want. When the ministerial representative came back with the minister’s own amendments on the simplification of the reciprocity clause, everybody stuttered. They wouldn’t go against the minister, that is for sure,” she hollers. “Robert, everybody knows, is a minister’s man.”
He also happens to be the director of a plastic bag production company no less, and the former organiser of concerts by AOR artists like Tina Turner and Joe Cocker. Maltasong chairpersons indeed need less artistic credentials than business wisdom. Even Borg admits there is little about the Eurovision other than an international showcase for Maltese artists.
“It’s just fun, nothing to be uptight about,” she says. “And it offers great opportunities for Maltese artists. The rest is all business, impartiality, and management.”
Of course it reflects perfectly on the quality of the obscure genre of eurothrash artists who cherish our TV screens once a year with their outrageous costumes, power ballads, performative hyperbole, and their stuttering negotiation with the English language.
“I really loved doing it. It opens doors for the Maltese singers. And that’s why I wasn’t going to close these doors myself,” Borg says in candid conceit.
It reveals much about how Grace Borg, with her distinctive voice packing in the decibels, likes to be in control. Certainly it makes it uncomfortable to live with for some: “Yes. Because if I believe something, and I believe that is how it should be, I will definitely make it a personal saga. With me, you have to let me work and don’t mess about with me.”
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
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