Estrada is a musical style largely defined by its performance. Its stars are larger-than-life personalities who draw audiences into the show through expressive singing and direct engagement. Most often classically trained vocalists, they often have operatic ranges and typically perform songs written by professional composers and poets. Performances typically lean heavily on spectacle, with large […]

Irina Dubtsova is a Russian singer known for her energetic pop style, extensive series of collaborations, and strong songwriting ability. Dubtsova was born in 1982 in Volgograd. She grew up with music in both formal and informal capacities. Her father was a musician who instilled a love of music and singing in Dubtsova. At only […]

Aygul Barieva (Айгуль Бариева in Russian) is a renowned Tatar singer who’s been performing now for more than 20 years. She’s a Distinguished Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan, among many other awards. Most of her repertoire is in the Tatar language, though she occasionally performs in Russian as well. Barieva is from Kazan, the capital of […]

Irina Dorofeeva (Ірына Дарафеева in Belarusian, Ирина Дорофеева in Russian) is one of Belarus’s most well-known singers and, as of recently, a political figure Dorofeeva got her musical start at age 12, when she became the soloist of a youth vocal-instrumental ensemble, Rainbow (Радуга), in Mogilev, the Belarusian city where she grew up. Over her early teenage […]

Sofia Rotaru (Софiя Ротару) is an enormously popular and influential Soviet, Ukrainian, and Romanian/Moldovan singer. Her career has lasted almost 50 years and is still going, and she has not only won most of the major music awards and lifetime achievement awards, but she is also a People’s Artist of both Ukraine and Moldova and a […]

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. […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]