As I’m sure you’re aware by now, MyHeritage are this year’s official sponsors of the Eurovision Song Contest! As such, they are producing lots of ESC-related content on their Eurovision blog. Over the coming days, they will be posting the results of Eurovision contestants, past and present. One of the first to be revealed is that of North Macedonia’s Tamara Todevska, which even revealed a Eurovision relative!
Being from one of Eurovision’s Balkan nations, it’s hardly surprising to see that Tamara is 86% Balkan. The remaining 14%, however, reveals a more unexpected mix; Tamara’s results reveal that she is also partially North African, Scandinavian, Ashkenazi Jewish and Finnish!
MyHeritage uncovered over 780 DNA relatives, spread across the world from the USA to Kazakhstan. Most notably, they discovered that Tamara is a distant relative of Rizo Feratović, a member of Montenegro’s D-mol! Tamara is already known to be part of one of Eurovision’s many sisterly duos. Now, she has two Eurovision relatives!
I never knew about my Jewish background and that some of my family came from North Africa. I have a brand-new perspective on my heritage. …There is a history about me that I never knew existed before.
Tamara discussing her results with MyHeritage
You can see the full breakdown of her results below:
Who is Tamara Todevska?
Born in Skopje, Tamara was raised in a musical family; her father is a music professor and her mother is an opera singer. Her sister is Tijana Dapčević, who participated in Eurovision 2014 with the song “To the Sky”, for which Tamara featured as a backing vocalist. Outside of Eurovision, she has released a number of singles and two albums: Sino (2005) and Eden Den (2015).
Being considered somewhat of a Eurovision veteran, Tamara has been known to the Eurovision fans as Tose Proevski’s and Tijana’s backing vocalist in 2004 and 2014, respectively. However, her first Eurovision experience was with her 2008 entry “Let Me Love You” featuring Vrcak and Adrian Gadzha. They just narrowly missed out on the final; despite finishing 10th overall in their semi-final, the juries selected Charlotte Perrelli’s “Hero” to progress to the final instead. This year, she is returning for her first solo attempt and is hoping to make her country proud!
North Macedonia at the Eurovision Song Contest
North Macedonia, formerly participating as the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R. Macedonia), has participated in the contest 18 times. After an unsuccessful attempt in 1996, they officially debuted at the 1998 contest with Vlado Janevski’s “Ne zori, zoro”.
North Macedonia is one of the most unlucky countries in the contest. After 18 appearances, they are yet to crack the top 10. To date, their best result was Elena Risteska’s 12th-place finish in 2006 with “Ninanajna”. Their most recent Grand Final appearance was with Kaliopi’s “Crno i belo” in 2012, which finished 13th. North Macedonia has failed to qualify from the semi-final round in ten of the last eleven contests (2008–18). Note, they finished in 10th place in the semi final rounds in both 2008 and 2009, and only didn’t progress due to the jury save rule that was in place at the time.
Last year, they were represented by Eye with the song “Lost & Found”. Despite being popular with fans prior to the contest, the song did not qualify for the Grand Final in Lisbon. This year, Tamara will be the first to represent ‘North Macedonia’, will she help the name change to open a new chapter for the country? Time will tell. She will perform 17th in the second semi-final on May 16.
What do you think about Tamara’s DNA results? Will Tamara be the first artist to bring North Macedonia to the Grand Final following the name change? Let us know! Be sure to stay updated by following @ESCXTRA on Twitter, @escxtra on Instagram and liking our Facebook page for the latest updates! We’ll also be posting plenty of content on our YouTube in the run up to Tel Aviv!
