Zlata Ognevich (Злата Огнєвіч; real name Inna Leonidivna Bordyug, Інна Леонідівна Бордюг) is a Ukrainian pop singer and political activist. She sings mainly in Ukrainian, though sometimes also in Russian and English. Ognevich was born in Murmansk, Russia, to Serbian and Italian parents, but they moved to Sudak, a city in Crimea, when she was […]

Lyuk (Люк; translates to “manhole” in Russian, but the members said they just liked how it sounded) was a Ukrainian rock and rock-adjacent band that broke up in 2011. They’re also affiliated with the genres of punk, acid jazz, lounge, funk, hip-hop, and a bunch of others—the band members themselves have had a hard time defining exactly […]

Taisiya Povaliy (Таїсія Повалій) is a classic Soviet and Ukrainian pop and shanson singer. Born in 1964 near Kyiv to a musical family, Povaliy attended music school in Kyiv and then worked at a music hall for a few yeas before starting a solo career. She won a number of Soviet music contests at the beginning of […]

Controversial, bizarre, and talented, there is no one quite like Ukrainian singer/comedian/actor/drag queen Verka Serduchka (Верка Сердючка). Serduchka is the drag persona of Andriy Danylko (Андрій Данилко) and frequently performs and sings at concerts and in films. Danylko himself is a wide-ranging actor, composer, singer, and performer who was born in Poltava, Ukraine, to rural roots. […]

Jamala was born in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, where her ancestors were sent to from Crimea in one of Joseph Stalin’s bloody ethnic deportations. Her father, an ethnic Crimean Tatar, was a choir master. Her mother, an Armenian whose roots trace back to the now-disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, was a pianist. Jamala’s musical education thus started from […]