Slavic

Taras Petrynenko (Тарас Гаринальдович Петриненко) is a Ukrainian musician, singer, composer, and poet. He is known as the author of the song “Ukraine” (“Україна”), which has become a de facto anthem of the country. Some of his other well-known songs are “Song About a Song” (“Пісня про пісню”), “Lord, Have Mercy On Us” (“Господи, помилуй […]

ManSound (МенСаунд) is a Ukrainian vocal sextet from Kyiv. They have taken part in numerous jazz festivals around the world, including the prestigious Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in the United States. In 2001 they were named “Best Vocal Group” by the All-American Entertainment Awards and won first prize at Vokal Total’s international a cappella competition. […]

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 […]

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 […]

Rosava (Росава; real name Olena Yanchuk, Олена Янчук) is a contemporary Ukrainian folk, electronica, and pop singer. She has been on the scene since 2001, with varying degrees of popularity, and has recently had something of a resurgence, appearing in the top ten of Ukraine’s hit parades. Rosava grew up near Kyiv in a musical family. Her father […]

Zlata Ognevich (Злата Огнєвіч; real name Inna Leonidivna Bordyug, Інна Леонідівна Бордюг) is a Ukrainian pop singer and political activist. She sings mainly in Ukrainian, though sometimes also in Russian and English. Ognevich was born in Murmansk, Russia, to Serbian and Italian parents, but they moved to Sudak, a city in Crimea, when she was […]

Lyuk (Люк; translates to “manhole” in Russian, but the members said they just liked how it sounded) was a Ukrainian rock and rock-adjacent band that broke up in 2011. They’re also affiliated with the genres of punk, acid jazz, lounge, funk, hip-hop, and a bunch of others—the band members themselves have had a hard time defining exactly […]

Potap and Nastya (Потап и Настя) are a Ukrainian pop/rock duo. They sing mainly in Russian, occasionally in English, and rarely in Ukrainian. Their linguistic preferences have brought them controversy in their native Ukraine, but they remain a highly popular contemporary group, and they affirm that they are fully Ukrainian, despite singing in Russian. The group consists […]