Interview with Guntars Racs, Latvian artist, songwriter, producer extraordinaire

Guntars Racs is an artist, songwriter, and producer from Latvia and has worked with MicRec Records.  This year, MicRec had a number of their artists perform at the Latvian National Selection Dziesma 2013.  Five of them performed in the finals (Liene Candy,  Marta Ritova, Sabine Berezina, and Antra Stafecka).  ESC United had the opportunity to chat with Guntars.

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ESCUnited: You are one of the mot known names in the Latvian music business. You have had several songs at Eurovision, Please tell us about them

Guntars: Yes as a song writer I have had three songs so far in Eurovision for Latvia.
1 – Dziesma par laimi performed by Fomins and Kleins and co-written with Tomas Kleins
2 – I hear your heart performed by Cosmos and co-written with Cosmos and Molly-Ann Leiken
3 – What for performed by Aisha and co-written by Janis Lusens

ESCUnited: Besides a composer, you are also a record company boss. Several songs from your company have been entries in Eurovision. Please tell us about them.

Guntars: As a publisher I have had all three the songs I have written plus
1 – My star with Brainstorm
2 – Too much with Arnis Mednis
3 – The war is not over with Walters & Kazha
4 – Hello from Mars with F-L-Y
5 – Questa notte with Bonaparti.lv
6 – Angel in Disguiser wirth Musiqq

I think it is a good result for me as publisher as every year there is stiff competition

ESCUnited: The song Dziesma par laimi of 2004 was recorded in no less than 9 languages, Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Polish, Dutch, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian and Finnish. Why did you pick those 9 languages? And why stop at 9, what about a 10th version?

Guntars: Yes, that’s true. We have recorded it in 9 languages and all languages we choose, because we have had many Eurovision fans who sent us their lyrics, there were even more, but we just had no enough time to record them prior the international gala show. Belarusian version were chosen because that year Byelorussian entry had visited Latvia and assist in the studio. And yes, thanks to OGAE Rest of the World president, Roy, now we have offer from South African artist Cole Van Dias and she is about to record it in Afrikaans language! We are really thrilled.

We’ll keep you updated when Cole’s version is released!