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 […]

SuperAlisa (СуперАлиса in Russian; also written as SUPERӘLİSӘ in Tatar; real name Alisa Khusainova, in Russian transliteration, or Алиса Шамил кызы Хөсәенова in Tatar) is a contemporary/recent Tatar pop(ish) singer, and an extremely individual figure on the Tatar music scene. She sings mostly in Tatar. SuperAlisa’s music is a highly unusual mix of electronica arrangements, traditional Tatar […]

Dilya Nigmatullina (Диля Нигматуллина) is a Tatar singer of pop music. Though she has fewer albums to her name than some of her Tatar pop contemporaries, she has a loyal following and is pretty well known in the small Tatar pop world. Nigmatullina actually grew up not in Tatarstan but in the Russian republic of […]

Albina Apanaeva (Альбина Апанаева in Russian) is a Tatar singer. She performs pop music in the Tatar language, and occasionally in Russian. She also currently works as an event organizer, though she’s best known as a singer—she’s sometimes even called the most popular Tatar pop singer. Apanaeva was born in Naberezhnye Chelny (Яр Чаллы in […]

Irke (Иркә in Tatar, Иркэ in Russian; real name Aygul Minshakirova, Айгөл Миншакирова in Tatar) is a contemporary Tatar singer. She sings mainly pop, with some folk mixed in. She’s also an actress, and both her acting and singing work has taken place entirely in the Tatar language. Irke is from a village in the south of […]

Alsou is a Russian singer of Bashkir and Tatar descent. Born in Tatarstan, the USSR, in 1983, she has lived in Siberia, Moscow, New York, and London and holds dual Russian and British citizenship. Professionally, she is known only by her first name. Her full name is Alsou Ralifovna Abramova. Her father, Ralif Rafilovich Safin, […]

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 […]