Igor Rasteryaev (Игорь Растеряев) is a Russian singer, poet, musician, and actor. He is something of a newer generation of bard—he didn’t come of age until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so he didn’t partake in the underground activities that are usual for bards, but his musical style itself fits in well to […]

Buranovskiye Babushki (Бурановские Бабушки) is a long-running traditional folk choir from Buranovo, Russia. They sing predominantly in their native Udmurt language, a subgroup of the Uralic language family, which also includes Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian. Formed in 1968 in an effort to preserve the local singing traditions, the group came to national prominence 40 years later […]

Artur Pirozhkov (Артур Пирожков) is a stage name—one of many—for entertainer Aleksandr Vladimirovich Revva (Александр Владимирович Ревва). Of Estonian ancestry, his family immigrated to Donetsk, Ukraine, where their last name was eventually Slavicized to Revva (from Erwa). His father, a renowned mathematician and professor in Donetsk, and his mother separated when he was fairly young. He […]

Roads Change Color (Дороги Меняют Цвет, or ДМЦ) is an alternative Russian-singing folk-rock band from Poltava, Ukraine. Originally a two-piece group composed of vocalist Andrey Grechanik (Андрей Гречаник) and guitarist Sergeу Starostenko (Сергей Старостенко), the band has since expanded to include a keyboardist, bassist, drummer, and, for a brief period prior to her tragic death, a violin […]

Olga Arefyeva (Ольга Арефьева) is a Russian singer, published poet, dancer, theater actress, and educator. Born in a small town (Verkhnyaya Salda/Верхняя Салда) outside of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in 1964, she—along with her band, The Ark (Ковчег)—has released a staggering 18 albums since the early 1990s and composed more than 400 original songs. She is […]

Grigory Leps (Григорий Лепс) is a Russian singer best known for his contributions to shanson (a genre of Russian music that often tells stories about the criminal underworld). Leps is from Sochi and started playing music when he was young, which initially competed with soccer in his affections—but luckily for us, music won. He studied […]

Sogdiana (real name Oksana Nechitaylo, Оксана Нечитайло) is a Russian-Uzbek pop singer. She sings in Uzbek, Russian, and Chechen, though most often in Uzbek. Sogdiana’s family is Chechen, but she grew up in Uzbekistan—she was born in 1984 in Tashkent. She studied the piano in school and studied at a conservatory at the same time, […]

Veronika Dolina (Вероника Долина) is a Russian singer, poet, and bard—one of the few women in that male-dominated genre. She was born and raised in Moscow, in a family of an aircraft-designer father and a doctor mother. She studied at music school when she was young and then entered the French department at university, training […]

Bi-2 (Би-2) is a Belorussian/Russian alternative rock band that has been in existence on and off since the late 1980s. Its two founders, Lyova Bi-2 (Лёва Би-2; Yegor Bortnik, Егор Бортник) and Shura Bi-2 (Шура Би-2; Aleksandr Uman, Александр Уман), met as teenagers in Bobruisk, Belarus, where they were both involved in the theater of […]