JAMALA – SUN TAVRIDA
Ukrainian singer of Crimean Tatar origin Jamal is considered an uncomfortable singer. And all because she does not shock the public with cheap scandals, does not sing “sticky” songs and does not promote her name duets with popular colleagues. Her songs are filled with meaning and taken out of the depths of the soul, and non-standard five-octave vocals fascinate the audience. And only this Ukrainian winner of Eurovision 2016 wants to do all my life.
Musical family
From early childhood, the life of the future singer did not differ carelessness. Susana Jamaladinova (the real name of Jamala) was born in the Kyrgyz city of Osh on August 27, 1983. Her paternal ancestors were deported from the Crimea to Kyrgyzstan in 1944. And the ancestors of the mother (Armenians by nationality) had to leave Nagorno-Karabakh after dispossession. Jamala’s parents met the singer Jamala at the music school, where Galina was a pianist, and Alim – the conductor of her ensemble, who performed Crimean Tatar music, as well as melodies of the peoples of Central Asia. The Jamaladinovs family celebrated the first birthday of their daughter in Melitopol, Ukraine. Jamala’s father dreamed of returning to his historic homeland in the Crimea, but in the 1980s there was an unofficial ban on moving the Crimean Tatars to the peninsula and, moreover, selling them housing. Then Jamala’s parents decided to make a fake divorce. My father stayed with two daughters in Melitopol, and her mother went to the village of Malorechenskoye (Kuchuk-Uzen) not far from Alushta, where she rented a room and began to teach music. After 4 years, she managed to buy housing and reunite with her family.
In love with jazz
From the age of three, Susana sang at all family celebrations and friendly gatherings, she instantly entered the image that she invented, copied famous performers, reproduced by ear their vocals. Papa Alim regularly brought home folk music – Crimean-Tatar, Iranian, Azerbaijani … Therefore, Jamala still considers her parents to be her first teachers and authorities in the singer Jamalamira music. Even before going to bed, my mother put a record to her daughter so that she calmly fell asleep. As soon as the music ended on one side, the girl woke up and began to cry.
Susana was lucky to meet with arranger Gennady Astsaturyan, who instilled in her a love for jazz art. At first he forced the girl to listen to the recordings of the great Ella Fitzgerald. Of course, such non-childish vocals were at first in the young Jamal. But Gennady did not depart from the intended plan. Once he gave her a tape with Ella’s songs and told her to memorize her next meeting. Then Susana did not know English, but this did not stop her teacher. The novice singer had to learn all the songs by ear, taking on the task with maximum responsibility. When she came to Astsaturyan to perform jazz compositions, he did not even listen, giving her a new tape. He knew perfectly well that persistent Susana would learn it. Thanks to this training, she entered the Simferopol School of Music without any problems. In the classroom, she studied classics, and then hurried to the basement, where she played in her jazz group Tutti.
In search of a teacher
The next stage in the life of Jamala was the Kiev National Academy of Music, where she entered the class of opera vocals. But there the girl had to face serious problems, the singer Jamal because of whom she several times wanted to quit training. The fact is that because of the authoritarian pedagogical approach of one of Susana’s teachers, nervous ligaments often had a non-clogging ligament, and she lost her voice. The teacher allowed herself to insult a student, told her that her voice is suitable only to scream on the beach: “Shashlyk!”. As a result, the girl moved to another teacher – Natalia Gorbatenko. After that, she became the best student on the course and graduated from the Academy with a red diploma.
New wave of Jamala
She was immediately made an offer that not every graduate receives. Susana was invited to work in the Swiss Opera House. But her boyfriend, the first and crazy love, did not want to let go of the girl. He even offered her to marry him in order to keep her in Ukraine, but she did not want to start a family in such a situation. Jamal dreamed of going on an internship at the Teatro alla Scala and devoting her life to opera. However, fate decreed otherwise.
Jamala has participated in song contests since the age of 15. At the international show “Voices of the Future” in Nizhny Novgorod, she won the grand prix. But the turning point in the singer’s creative life was 2009 and the victory in the New Wave competition in Jurmala. She presented to the public and the jury a cover version of the song “History Repeating” of the British group Propellerheads, performed the Ukrainian folk song “Top, My Top” and her own song “Mama’s boy”.
