ONUKA is a Ukrainian electro-pop group from Kyiv noted for their use of traditional Ukrainian folk instruments—predominantly the bandura (бандура) and the sopilka (сопілка)—in their arrangements. The band sings in both Ukrainian and English. Formed in 2013 by vocalist and songwriter Natalia, or Nata, Zhyzhchenko (Наталія Жижченко) and multi-instrumentalist and producer Yevgeny Filatov (Євген Філатов), the […]

Iryna Bilyk is a highly celebrated Ukrainian singer/songwriter and entertainer from Kyiv. Mainly a composer of ballads and dance pop, she has released albums in her native Ukrainian as well as Russian and Polish. Her impressive commercial success in Ukraine, fueled in large part by her ability to adapt to the changing popular music landscape, won […]

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 […]