The Boys of Paul Street (Chłopcy z Placu Broni) is a Polish classic rock band formed in 1987 in Krákow by Bogdan Łyszkiewicz. The name of the band is a reference to a Hungarian classic children’s novel about two groups of boys who end up in a territiorial war with one another. Łyszkiewicz was the […]
Tadeusz Wózniak is a Polish musician, composer, and singer. He has performed with various bands over the years as well as written songs for other performers and for films. Wózniak went to music school for a few years when he was young, but didn’t finish. He picked up the guitar on his own a few […]
T.Love is a Polish rock/pop band that was founded in 1982 in Częstochowa. Originally called Teenage Love Alternative, they chose an interesting time to start the band—during martial law. The four original members, Zygmunt (Muniek) Staszczyk (vocals, bass), Janusz Knorowski (electric guitar), Dariusz Zajaç (keyboard), and Jacek Wudecki (drums), were all in high school together, […]
Sztywny Pal Azji (which seems to mean something like “Rigid Pole of Asia”—something may have been lost in translation) is a Polish classic rock band that was formed in the 1980s and is still active today. It was formed in 1985 by Jarosław Kisiński (guitar), Leszek Nowak (vocals, piano), Paweł Nazimek (bass), Janusz Deda (drums), […]
Citizen GC (Obywatel GC) was a band created by Grzegorz Ciechowski. It was more or less his brief solo career, with the other members of the band cycling in an out according to his need. Ciechowski was a Polish musician, singer, and songwriter who is known mainly for the band Republic (Republika), for which he […]
Czesław Niemen was a distinguished Polish singer-songwriter and rock/folk/jazz/electronica musician who made a name for himself in a variety of genres, instruments, and roles. Niemen was born in a Polish village in what is now Belarus. He studied at a music school in Grodno for a year to study the Russian accordion (баян) when he […]
Katerina Golitsyna (originally Yakovleva; Катерина Голицына/Яковлева) is a Russian shanson singer. An ethnic Kuban Cossack, she was born in Omsk, a large Siberian city, but the family soon returned to their roots in the Russian Caucasus and then moved on again to Moscow. Golitsyna started playing music almost as soon as they got there, when […]
Mikhail Shufutinsky (Михаил Шуфутинский) is a Russian jazz and shanson legend. Growing up in postwar Moscow, he was drawn to music from his early childhood, learning to play the accordion—which was considered a “bourgeois” instrument in that Soviet era. He switched to the similar button accordion (баян), which he was able to learn at school […]
Venya D’rkin (Веня Д’ркин; originally Aleksandr Litvinov, Александр Литвинов) was a Ukrainian (Russian-speaking) poet, songwriter, musician, artist, and storyteller, and one of the later generation of bards. He had a much more informal, unpolished image than some other recent musicians, showing his truly countercultural ethos. D’rkin grew up in a small mining town near Luhansk. […]
Kirill Komarov (Кирилл Комаров) is a Russian rock and experimental musician, one of the stranger and more interesting of recent times. From St. Petersburg, he studied Turkish philology at the Eastern Department of Leningrad State University, after which he began translating Turkish poetry and also writing his own original verses. He started writing the songs […]
Troeraznykh (Троеразных; the name translates to “three different”) is a Kyrgyz rap collective most of whose songs are in Russian. They originally consisted of two beatmakers and one guitarist—or, as Boorsok, a Kyrgyz magazine, has put it, “three forms who don’t resemble one another even by a drop.” They aim to be a “human” group, […]
Saltanat Ashirova (Салтанат Аширова) is a Kyrgyz rock and pop singer known for her “crystal voice,” according to New Faces (Новые лица). She sings mostly in Russian. In addition to her solo career, she is known for her membership in the now-broken-up band Eles and in her new project, The M.A.P. She sings and plays […]
