BASEL – There’s one word you hear more than any other in Basel during the Eurovision Song Contest: Sauna.
The northern Swiss city isn’t known as an epicenter of steamy wood-cabin relaxation, but the small municipality of Vora in Finland is, and three local performers have made saunas synonymous with this year’s Eurovision.
KAJ — pronounced “kai” and named for the members’ initials — is bookies’ favorite to win the pan-continental music contest this week with “Bara Bada Bastu,” an ode to steam and heat whose title translates roughly as “just take a sauna.”
KAJ is representing Sweden, but the band members come from neighboring Finland, a country of 5.5 million people and 3.3 million saunas, where they are part of the Swedish-speaking minority.
At Eurovision, the trio perform on a set styled like a rustic cabin in the woods, backed by dancers dressed as lumberjacks or in big white towels. The song has an infectiously catchy chorus, a memorable dance routine and a one-word invocation to “sauna!” that is shouted at KAJ wherever they go.
If they are sick of it, it doesn’t show.
“The Eurovision bubble is a great bubble to be in,” Jakob Norrgård told The Associated Press on Thursday. He’s the J in KAJ, alongside fellow band members Kevin Holmström and Axel Åhman.
Norrgård said that he expected Eurovision to be a welcoming environment, “but not this friendly. This is a bit over the top.”
The band members’ only regret is that they haven’t had a sauna since arriving in Basel for Eurovision, which ends Saturday with a grand final that will see acts from 26 countries compete at Basel’s St. Jakobshalle arena for the continent’s pop crown.
Holmström said that the band is delighted to be an ambassador for sauna culture.
“It’s a thing I really endorse,” he said. “It’s good for people. It is good for me, for both my mental and physical health, and (it’s) also a very social event.”
KAJ was formed in 2009 and built a strong local following with humorous songs in Vora’s local dialect. Not long ago they were performing at birthday parties and in town halls of their home region. They entered Sweden’s national Eurovision selection contest, Melodifestivalen, thinking it might get them some gigs in Sweden.
They unexpectedly won that contest, and their performance in Saturday’s Eurovision final is likely to be watched by more than 150 million people.
The Eurovision winner will be decided by a mix of public voting and points from national juries. Victory for KAJ would give Sweden a record eight victories since the contest was founded in 1956, adding KAJ to a list of Swedish winners that includes ABBA.
It would also mean a huge amount to Swedish-speaking Finns, who make up about 5% of Finland’s population — and to sauna enthusiasts.
Sauna-lovers from Vora — along with the Finnish city of Tampere, which bills itself as the sauna capital of the world — drove a mobile sauna 1,500 miles (2,500 kilometers) to Basel, parked it near the Rhine and opened it to the public for free during the weeklong Eurovision festivities. A dip in the chilly river after working up a sweat was optional.
It sparked the kind of cultural cross-fertilization that fans say is the essence of Eurovision. At the pop-up sauna, local Swiss people steamed and chatted with Finns, a Canadian and others. When KAJ dropped by for a visit, they were mobbed by selfie-seeking fans.
“I love Finnish sauna culture, because it celebrates the freedom of choice,” said Dorothee Schulte-Basta, a Vora resident who traveled to Basel with the mobile sauna. “There are no rules in the sauna. Come as you are — everyone’s equal in the sauna.”
Finnish politicians have long used saunas, relaxed but exposing, as an ideal setting for hard talks, a practice known as “sauna diplomacy.” KAJ wear drab suits onstage in tribute to Urho Kekkonen, a long-serving Finnish president who famously deployed the technique in talks with Finland’s overbearing neighbor the Soviet Union.
KAJ never thought a lo-fi song about rural saunas would take them so far at a competition known for electro-pop, outrageous outfits and over-the-top staging.
“When you sit there on the stage and the song is about to start and you see all the LED screens, the millions of lights, and we’re just three dudes sitting and grilling a sausage, the contrast is so funny,” Norrgård said.
“And that’s exactly our type of humor — you shouldn’t be doing this, this is so stupid. It’s funny. It’s really cool as well.”
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Kwiyeon Ha and Hilary Fox contributed to this story.
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