Naviband or NAVI (the group alternates between the two names, both written in the Latin alphabet) is a contemporary Belarusian folk/alternative rock band. They sing in both Belarusian and Russian. The group’s leaders have said that they don’t plan in advance whether a song will be in Belarusian or Russian; they just go with what seems […]

Garik Sukachov (Гарик Сукачёв) is Russian musician, singer-songwriter, poet, actor, film director, and television presenter. He is famous as a member of the seminal Russian rock band Brigada S (Бригада С) and more recently as the host of Channel One’s television series Conversation (Беседка). Sukachov was born in the Moscow suburbs in 1959 to a […]

33ა (33a) is a Georgian folk-rock band based out of Tbilisi. It was founded in 1994, during the troubled “dark 90s” of post-Soviet Georgia, led by Niaz Diasamidze. The name of the band, in fact, comes from the address of Diasamidze’s Tbilisi Apartment – 33a Paliashvili Street. All of the band members are Georgian. Diasamidze […]

The Red Elvises (also known as Igor and the Red Elvises; or Красные Элвисы, in its less-frequent Russian form) is a Russian-American band that plays an eclectic mixture of rockabilly, reggae, folk, disco, funk, surf rock, and traditional Russian music. The band is based out of Los Angeles, but has had successful tours in Ukraine […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

Pilot (Пилот; sometimes also written PilOt or PILOT) is a Russian grunge/punk/metal/rock/folk band from St. Petersburg, Russia. It was founded in 1997 by Ilya “Devil” (Илья “Чёрт”; real name Ilya Knabengof, Илья Кнабенгоф), the band’s singer. The other members were Roman Chuikov (Роман Чуйков; guitar), Stas Markov (Стас Марков; bass), and Vitya Kuzmichev (Витя Кузмичев; […]