Okean Elzi (Океан Ельзи—note that this is the Ukrainian spelling) is a prolific Ukrainian rock band from Lviv. Formed in 1994, they have released nine studio albums since 1998, toured extensively throughout Ukraine, Russia, the majority of Europe, and North America, and are heralded today as one of the greatest rock bands of the former Soviet […]

Ruslana (Руслана; full name Руслана Степанівна Лижичко in Ukrainian) is a wildly popular Ukrainian singer. She is typically known by her first name only. Born in 1973 in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, she studied classical music from the time that she was four years old and graduated from the Lviv Conservatory, where she studied […]

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 […]