Shoro (Шоро) is the Kyrgyz drink of choice on a hot summer’s day. Considered an affordable, healthy refreshment and thought to improve digestion, Shoro, which means “salty” in Kyrgyz, produces pungent and slightly tangy fermented drinks.  Shoro is a truly self-made brand, built from the ground up. The company began in 1992, when brothers Tebaldi […]

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 […]

Bibinur (Бибинур; in Tatar the word means “carrying light”) is a 2009 drama film. It was made in Russia but is largely in Tatar, the language of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan. It was filmed in Algaevo (Алгаево), a village in Tatarstan. In 2011, the documentary Bibinur: The Film About the Film (Бибинур — фильм о фильме) was released. The film […]

The Return (Хайтарма / Qaytarma) is a 2013 Crimean-Tatar (not to be confused with simply Tatar!) dramatic film. It was produced in Ukraine and is in both Russian and Crimean Tatar languages. The film tells the story of the events of May 1944, when over the course of a few days Stalin had the Crimean Tatars […]