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 […]
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 […]
Ilyaz Abdrazakov (Ильяз Абдразаков) is a contemporary Kyrgyz rock/pop singer. He is ethnically also part Kazakh, but sings mostly in Kyrgyz. Unusual among the small crowd of contemporary Kyrgyz singers, he uses harder rock instrumentation and sometimes electronica in his music, and while his voice is part of the current tradition of smooth, easy-to-listen-to voices, […]
Gulnur Satylganova (Гульнур Сатылганова) is a very popular contemporary and classic Kyrgyz pop(ish) singer. She is one of the best-known female Kyrgyz singers perhaps of all time—it’s hard to overstate her importance to Kyrgyz contemporary music. Satylganova was born in Toktogul, Krygyzstan, in 1968. She always dreamed of becoming a performer, but it took her […]
Aibek Zamirov (Айбек Замиров) is a Kyrgyz pop singer who sings in both Kyrgyz and Russian (and occasionally English). He is best known for participating in the duet Bishkek with Arsen (Арсен) when the two were representing Kyrgyzstan at the New Wave international music festival in 2011. They were competing separately at first, but for […]
Daniel Bloom (born Daniel Borcuch) is a composer, music producer, and musician from Kwidzyn, northern Poland. He also runs his own music studio, Two Minutes Elsie Studio. He studied music in school, particularly piano, and then studied archaeology at university. Bloom’s career is multifaceted, existing in several different mediums simultaneously: his online biographies describe him […]
Błażej Król is an up-and-coming Polish musician currently active mainly in the alternative genre. He was born in Gorzów Wielkopolski, in western Poland, in 1984. He started his music career with the band Kawałek Kulki, which he founded along with Paweł Turłaj (drums) and Magdalena Turłaj (violin, vocals) in 2001 in Gorzów Wielkopolski. He himself […]
Band’Eros (Банд’Эрос) is a Russian R&B/hip-hop group that was founded in Moscow in 2005. The band’s name is a purposeful play on words – calling to mind both “banderos” – a Spanish word for an outlaw and “Band Eros” – referring to a certain sexuality within the group. The original members were Batishta (Kirill Petrov/Батишта, […]
