ESCDAILY.com had the pleasure to speak first with Jiesen Ké, the Manager for Comuncations and New Media, about the upcoming Our Sound: Asia-Pacific Song Contest.

The first Our Sound: Asia-Pacific Song Contest will take place in Mumbai, India on November 26th this year. National Finals are about to start Asia-wide so we spoke to Jiesen just before the contest is well and truly about to take off. See what he had to say below;

Escdaily.com: First thank you for your time Jiesen, it must be a busy time for you regarding the contest at the moment.
Jiesen Ke: My pleasure.

Escdaily.com: How did you initially get involved in Our Sound and what’s your current position?
Jiesen Ke: I am the Manager for Communications and New Media for Our Sound. I originally worked on the development team for the format for the National Selections, and when the opportunity came to take on this new role I had to take it!

Escdaily.com: This year the contest takes place in Mumbai, India. Is the contest hosted on a bid process? Or will we travel to the winner’s home country in 2011?
Jiesen Ke: Keen fans of the contest will probably have noticed that the intended Host City changed a few months ago. We’re still making decisions about future contests, but for this year we’ve made the choice of host city based on the logistics of hosting this incredibly large-scale event. Our decisions about how we select the location of future contests will be based on a lot of different factors – but right now our focus is very much on Our Sound 2010.

Escdaily.com: Speaking about the change in Host City, the date for the contest has changed too.
Jiesen Ke: That’s correct. We had previously intended to launch in 2009, then in time for Chinese New Year this year. We came to the realisation pretty early on that establishing Our Sound for the first time would be a massive challenge – and it was better to do it right, if a bit late, than to do a shoddy job. It’s DEFINITELY happening this November though.

Escdaily.com: Our Sound is beginning with at least fourteen participating countries. Eurovision began with only seven and today has around forty entrants. Do you believe Our Sound has the ability to expand to become a competition Asia-wide?
Jiesen Ke: Asia comprises half the world’s population, and is home to many different diverse cultures and musical traditions. If there’s one constant amongst all of humanity, it’s our shared love of music in all its diversity. This year, most of Asia will be able to watch Our Sound live – and we expect that in future years, more countries will be involved.

Escdaily.com: Therefore, could we see semifinals incorporated into the event?
Jiesen Ke: Quite possibly – the format will continue to evolve over the next few years!

Escdaily.com: Our Sound has an interesting voting rule where you can vote for your own country and another. In Eurovision the voting is half jury and half televote lessen the impact of neighbour and political voting. What influenced the Our Sound voting rules?
Jiesen Ke: Asians are incredibly patriotic to their home countries! The two-vote system ensures that people in each country can actively support (or vote against!) their country’s song as well as choosing the best song from across the Asia-Pacific.
There won’t be a jury vote in 2010 – the people of the Asia-Pacific will, solely, make the decision.

Escdaily.com: We saw how the original Eurovision Song Contest expanded and developed into the Junior Eurovision Song Contest and Eurovision Dance Contest. Could this be an option for Our Sound in the future?
Jiesen Ke: There are many possibilities for the growth of the format – but our attention is still 100% on getting Our Sound established. We haven’t even finished our first Our Sound – it’s a little early to think about that sort of thing.

Escdaily.com: National Finals are already beginning. So far how have they progressed?
Jiesen Ke: I can’t reveal too much now, but selections will be different in every country. In Cambodia, selections are well advanced – they’ve already selected their singer through their show “Kompul Dara Asian”. There’ll be televised selections in some countries, in other countries artists, songs or both will be selected through an online and SMS vote or through an internal selection.

Escdaily.com: Why should people watch Our Sound? Will it have an online broadcast?
Jiesen Ke: Our Sound will not only be a celebration of music and culture, but will be an incredibly entertaining show! You’ll be able to watch Our Sound live on Channel V across the Asia-Pacific, and we expect to provide a live feed via OurSound.asia.

Escdaily.com: Drawing our chat to a close, can you give us any little secrets about the 2010 contest?
Jiesen Ke: All I can say is that from now until the announcement of the winner on the 28th of November, it is going to be incredibly exciting. We’re aiming to launch the full version of OurSound.asia in July, and announce the selections processes and the final list of participating countries at the same time. Before then, we hope to be able to spill a few proverbial beans – make sure to stay tuned to OurSound.asia for the latest news!
Finally, this contest is about the people of the Asia-Pacific. We’re really excited by the growth of our Facebook group, and we encourage you all to get involved – as a supporter, as a sponsor, or even as a possible participant!

Escdaily.com: Finally, do you have a message to our readers at escdaily.com?
Jiesen Ke: ESCDaily.com is awesome, but they could really use some money to keep their site running – so if anybody is in the mood to make a donation…? Seriously though, we definitely appreciate your support as we put together our first Our Sound. Thanks so much for the support!

Escdaily.com: Thankyou Jiesen and good luck for Our Sound 2010!

You can visit the official Our Sound website here and join the official facebook group here.

Stay tuned on escdaily.com for the latest news from the contest.