Neuromonakh Feofan (Нейромонах Феофан) is a mysterious and extraordinary product of the Russian club scene. The name “Neuromonakh” is derived from “Neurofunk,” a subgenre of drum and bass, and the Russian word for “monk.” The band sings exclusively in Russian, but mixes contemporary language with obsolete words and Old Church Slavonic to create epic verses […]

Aygul Barieva (Айгуль Бариева in Russian) is a renowned Tatar singer who’s been performing now for more than 20 years. She’s a Distinguished Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan, among many other awards. Most of her repertoire is in the Tatar language, though she occasionally performs in Russian as well. Barieva is from Kazan, the capital of […]

Alina Orlova (real name Alina Orlovskaja, Алина Орловская) is a Lithuanian singer-songwriter in the folk genre. Her unusual, ethereal voice and rich instrumentation backed up by piano have led to her well-deserved popularity in Lithuania. She sings in Lithuanian, Russian (her heritage is part Polish, part Russian), and English. She’s also sometimes considered a daina singer—daina is […]

Irina Dorofeeva (Ірына Дарафеева in Belarusian, Ирина Дорофеева in Russian) is one of Belarus’s most well-known singers and, as of recently, a political figure Dorofeeva got her musical start at age 12, when she became the soloist of a youth vocal-instrumental ensemble, Rainbow (Радуга), in Mogilev, the Belarusian city where she grew up. Over her early teenage […]

Naviband or NAVI (the group alternates between the two names, both written in the Latin alphabet) is a contemporary Belarusian folk/alternative rock band. They sing in both Belarusian and Russian. The group’s leaders have said that they don’t plan in advance whether a song will be in Belarusian or Russian; they just go with what seems […]

Stanislav, or Stas, Mikhailov (Станислав Владимирович Михайлов) is a popular Russian singer-songwriter. He has received the prestigious titles of Distinguished Artist of the Russian Federation (Заслуженный артист Российской Федерации) and the Golden Gramophone Award. He is also the best-paid artist in all of Russia, with an income of $21 million in 2012. His most famous […]

Garik Sukachov (Гарик Сукачёв) is Russian musician, singer-songwriter, poet, actor, film director, and television presenter. He is famous as a member of the seminal Russian rock band Brigada S (Бригада С) and more recently as the host of Channel One’s television series Conversation (Беседка). Sukachov was born in the Moscow suburbs in 1959 to a […]

33ა (33a) is a Georgian folk-rock band based out of Tbilisi. It was founded in 1994, during the troubled “dark 90s” of post-Soviet Georgia, led by Niaz Diasamidze. The name of the band, in fact, comes from the address of Diasamidze’s Tbilisi Apartment – 33a Paliashvili Street. All of the band members are Georgian. Diasamidze […]

Sofia Rotaru (Софiя Ротару) is an enormously popular and influential Soviet, Ukrainian, and Romanian/Moldovan singer. Her career has lasted almost 50 years and is still going, and she has not only won most of the major music awards and lifetime achievement awards, but she is also a People’s Artist of both Ukraine and Moldova and a […]