Junior Eurovision 2024 Malta profile: 'Stilla Ċkejkna' by Ramires Sciberras

This year, the small island nation of Malta will be represented at Junior Eurovision in Madrid by Ramires Sciberras with Stilla Ċkejkna.

You can find details on the entry, the artist, and the history of Malta at Junior Eurovision below.

About the artist: Ramires Sciberras

Born in Cambodia but moving to Malta at just one year old after being adopted by Maltese parents, 12-year-old Ramires continues a fantastic trend of Asia-Pacific representation at Eurovision and Junior Eurovision. He enjoys singing and playing the piano, and has participated in a number of local singing competitions in Malta. Stilla Ċkejkna is his first original single.

Ramires successfully beat out 14 other young hopefuls at the annual Malta Junior Eurovision Song Contest to win his ticket to Madrid. During the show, voting was split between a four-person studio jury and a televote.

After his win, Ramires' school in the northern part of the Maltese island organised a celebration to welcome him back to school, with all his teachers proud of their talented pupil!

About the song: Stilla Ċkejkna

Stilla Ċkejkna ("Young Star") is a soaring power ballad with lyrics that speak to Ramires' journey from Cambodia to Malta. Speaking to the Maltese press, Ramires spoke about the meaning of his song:

“My song reflects when my father and mother found me, adopted me and brought me to Malta and opened new doors to a beautiful life”.

It is the first ever Junior Eurovision song to be sung fully in Maltese, although Malta has previously sent songs partially in Maltese in 2013 ("Knock! Knock! Boom! Boom!"), 2017 ("Dawra tond") and 2019 ("We are more"). This is still a larger percentage of Maltese-language entries than have appeared at the main Eurovision Song Contest, where Malta has not sent a song in Maltese since 1972!

Singing in Maltese was very important to Ramires, who said that he was inspired after seeing other countries at Eurovision and Junior Eurovision increasingly use their native languages at recent contests.

Malta in the Eurovision Song Contest

Malta is one of the mainstay countries at Junior Eurovision, having missed only two contests since the Contest's launch in 2003. They proved to be formidable competition in the early 2010s, coming in the top six every year from 2013 to 2018 bar one. During this period, they also won the contest twice, with Gaia Cauchi's The Start in 2013 and Destiny Chukunyere's Not My Soul in 2015.

Destiny, of course, would later return to represent Malta at the main Eurovision event in 2021, where she came seventh with her song Je me casse.

Last year, Yulan Law managed a respectable tenth place with her power ballad Stronger.

Junior Eurovision 2023 will be held in Nice on 26 November 2023 (27 November 2023 in Australia).

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