WARDAKANTA 1984: introduced not by the wannabe ambassador to Belgium for a change, but by the high commissioner’s wife

Published: September 5, 2013 at 8:46am

Talk of the new “International Festival for the Maltese Song” sent some of my readers on a trip down memory lane, and one of them came back with this footage from Wardakanta 1984 on Xandir Malta.

The warda in question was the red rose, the symbol of socialism, so essentially what we had here was a Socialist Song Festival put up by the state broadcaster.

And as you can see, the hostess was none other than socialist broadcasting apparatchik extraordinaire, Miss Josette Grech, shortly to marry her much older male opposite number, the fabulously coiffed Norman Hamilton.

Kien il-vera wertit hanging on ghal tletin sena ghalk-dak l-iced bun ta’ Londra.

Resurrection? They never went away.




14 Comments Comment

  1. AG says:

    Was one of the trophies a ‘torca’?

  2. M.Spiteri says:

    Love the ‘torċa’ trophy! What symbol will they use this time round, I wonder.

  3. Rita Camilleri says:

    What horrible, horrible memories this clip has managed to evoke.

    • Jozef says:

      Which is why I drool on anything Manga.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ost2kCQIBbE

      Saturday late afternoon, followed by this Sherlock Holmes on Raidue.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAEhPh-6fc0

      In 1984 I discovered Nonsolomoda and saw what Malta had really been reduced to. The one thing which I’ll never forgive Labour is what it did to people’s soul.

      Taste, style, chic were either taboo or something to oppress with. No wonder Piano’s alien to both artificial constructs.

      Cuba had music, Czechoslavakia had Prague, we had troglodytic vandals looting everything. They set bronze cannons in concrete, to use as mooring points, and it was acceptable.

      Such was the rape of anything superfluous. L-orizzont keeps harping about the PN’s sense of superiority.

      Wrong, it’s a burden.

  4. Zeppi Zammit says:

    And the XL portraits of Dom and KMB dominating the stage backdrop…..reminds us of Kim-il-Sung legacies

  5. Jozef says:

    Again, ‘Kburin li ahna Maltin’.

    I think it won’t be that difficult to get the PN back on its feet. Even because it’s imperative Muscat explain what he’s after in Yanukovich’s Ukraine.

    He looked a real thug in the pics. Unshaved and with a haircut verging on the skinhead.

  6. caflisa says:

    Niftakarha tipprezenta lill-kantant Chris de Burgh f’Dar il-Mediterran. Libset libsa hamra apposta u d-diska ‘Lady in Red’ kienet dedikata lilha, kumbinazzjoni. Maaaaaa.

  7. Joe Fenech says:

    I think the Hamiltons have got a screw loose. Why on earth would someone who’s 75 and runs a successful business want to be a high commissioner? And by the way – the HC in London is currently unmanned. Zammit Tabona left months ago and Hamilton (when his holiness moves to the capital) is expected to go through an induction lasting a couple of months (probably to show him where the coffee, tea bags and toilet are).

  8. Angus Black says:

    ‘Kburin li ahna Maltin’.

    ‘Ilsiera ta Muammar Gaddafi’

    Yanablandovich must be extra proud.

  9. Allo Allo says:

    Mexjin lura ‘l hemm? X’gost.

  10. J Abela says:

    What really caught my eye was the Soviet-styled portraits of Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici in the background at 4:04. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

    • Jozef says:

      Oh, but it was standard fare. Eddie Fenech Adami didn’t exist, at least not by name.

      The leader of the opposition was a nameless individual, a burocrat.

      National politics was internal to Labour, anzi, il-moviment tal-haddiema, where the GWU was in blissful marriage and anything else considered subversive.

      We got Joseph li jghaqqadna now. A plutocratic design, faked market, conditioned press and undisclosable deals.

      It’s long term, and when the decline starts, it won’t go without major backlash. The real issue is that Muscat designed a closed system, not succession or evolution. It’s inherently undemocratic in self-containment.

      The fact he acknowledges ‘nationalists’ but not the PN will see to his short-sighted paradox. He will, unwittingly, build the opposition himself.

      His vision is static, perversely utopic and inward looking. The people he chose vouched faith but cannot sustain it. Failure by logic and ‘foreign’ forces then, is inevitable.

      It’s uncanny how the intention seems to take up Sant’s times with Mintoff’s religion.

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