Estrada is a French word meaning “stage.” In the USSR, it came to refer to big-name performing pop stars. Estrada artists rarely play an instrument and instead focus on pulling the audience into the performance through soaring vocals, intense emotions, direct interaction, humor, or other performative elements. Estrada music across the USSR is always recognizable […]

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, […]

Abdulaziz Karim (or, in Cyrillic, Абдулазиз Карим), also known as Asr, is an Uzbek pop singer and composer currently residing in Turkey. Karim, 42 years old, was extremely popular in Uzbekistan in the late 1990s and early 2000s and one of the early developers of the Uzbek, and Uzbek-language, pop scene. He got a Nikhol […]

Sevara Nazarxon (or Севара Назархан) is an extremely popular contemporary Uzbek singer and composer. She sings both pop and Uzbek folk music, in Uzbek, Russian, and English, and her usual style combines both pop and folk. She is one of the most, if not definitely the most, successful and popular singers in the history of […]