Among the leading contenders for participation in international competition Ukraine's Eurovision entry this year is a 32-year-old Crimean Tatar and her heartbreaking song about the mass deportation of her people ordered by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to Central Asia in 1944.
Singer Jamala won the first semi-final of the national selection with her song “1944”, receiving the highest rating from the judges and greatest number votes of support from TV viewers during SMS voting. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of Crimean Tatars were unable to participate in the vote because they live in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014.
I'm really sorry. I know that I have a lot of supporters in Crimea. A lot of people wrote to me that they sent SMS anyway because they support me. I tell them - you wasted your money, the SMS was not counted, but they said that they sent it anyway,” the singer said in an interview with the Ukrainian edition of RFE/RL.
Jamala's speech On February 6, at the semi-finals in Kyiv, it caused a wide resonance and strong support.
Today, with your music, you made me understand the pain that we lost Crimea. “I just cried with you,” said jury member singer Ruslana after Jamala’s performance.
Jamala's performance with the song “1944”:
“SONG-DEDITION”
The composition in English with choruses in the Crimean Tatar language tells about the deportation of almost 250 thousand Crimean Tatars in May 1944. Soviet government accused the Crimean Tatars of collaborating with the German Nazis during the occupation of the peninsula and ordered their deportation to Central Asia and remote areas of Russia.
Where is your mind? Humanity is crying.
You think you're gods but you're all mortal
Don't take my soul, our souls, - sings on English language Jamala.
Then a chorus sounds in the Crimean Tatar language, which is borrowed from the so-called unofficial national anthem of the Crimean Tatars “Winds of Alushta”, repeated with the refrain:
I did not enjoy my young years,
I couldn't live here.
It is believed that between 30 and 50 percent of those forcibly resettled died in the first two years after the deportation. Last November, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine supported a resolution that recognized the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 as genocide.
This is really a song about my family, about my grandmother. I couldn’t help but write about it. I really experienced this story both on stage and when I wrote. This is a dedication song. It was difficult for me to sing it,” says Jamala in an interview with the Ukrainian edition of RFE/RL.
Jamala's real name is Susana Jamaladinova. She was born in 1983 in Kyrgyzstan, where her father’s parents were deported. Jamala started making music with early childhood. First I studied at music school, and then, upon her family’s return to Crimea, she entered the Simferopol Music School, and then the Kyiv National Academy of Music in opera vocal class.
But her true hobby was performing jazz songs. WITH adolescence Jamala participated in vocal competitions. She won the main prize at the New Wave festival in Jurmala, Latvia, in 2009.
In 2011, Jamala reached the final of the Ukrainian Eurovision Song Contest with the song Smile. However, before the last round, she refused to participate in the competition, protesting what she believed were violations in the voting procedure.
Crimean Tatar politicians promised that they would appeal to the Eurovision organizers to ensure that measures were taken that would allow Crimean residents to participate in voting in the second semi-final, which will take place on February 13, and then in the final on February 21.
Jamala also says that the composition “1944” is not only about the past. It also makes me think about Jamala’s family, who still lives in Crimea.
Now the Crimean Tatars are in occupied territory, it is very difficult for them. They feel a lot of pressure, they disappear without a trace. And this is scary, I wouldn’t want history to repeat itself,” Jamala notes.
The second semi-final took place in Stockholm music competition"Eurovision". Ukrainian singer Jamala showed her number - bookmakers call her the main competitor of Sergei Lazarev in the fight for first place. “Lenta.ru” talks about Jamal and her song “1944,” the most discussed at the competition.
Jamala (Susanna Jamaladdinova) has been studying music since early childhood. She is 32 years old, she was born in Osh (Kyrgyzstan), where her great-grandmother was deported during the deportation of the Tatars from Crimea. My great-grandfather and all the men on my grandmother’s side died at the front. Her father is Tatar, her mother is Armenian.
In 1989, Susanna’s family managed to return to Crimea, to the village of Malorechenskoye (formerly Kuchuk-Uzen), where their ancestors lived. It took six years to buy a house and move the family. It was impossible to find someone who would agree to sell the house to returning Crimean Tatars, so the mother, whose nationality did not raise suspicions, was in charge of the purchase. The parents even had to temporarily divorce in order to clean out the “Tatar trace” in the mother’s documents. According to the singer, it was morally very difficult to decide to take such a step.
Susanna graduated with honors from the National Academy of Music named after P.I. Tchaikovsky in Kyiv in opera vocal class, but career opera singer I preferred pop music.
Fame came to her in 2009 after winning the “New Wave” competition for young performers in Jurmala - Jamala was awarded the Grand Prix. In 2011, her first English-language album For Every Heart was released. At the same time, the singer makes her first attempt to get to Eurovision. According to her, she was supposed to win the Ukrainian qualifying competition, but did not make it due to judicial fraud.
Five years later, having released four albums, Jamala tried again. She composed the song “1944” about two years ago for the album “Podikh” (2015), but this song was too different from the rest of the material in sound and mood, and was not included in the album.
The lyrics of the song are quite abstract, but according to Jamala, it is based on the story of her great-grandmother Nazylkhan, who was deported to Central Asia in 1944 with five small children in her arms. My great-grandfather fought in the Red Army at that time. Nazylkhan's little daughter Aishe died on the way. The soldiers accompanying the train did not allow the child to be buried and threw him onto the side of the road like garbage.
The news that Ukraine will go to Eurovision with a song about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars caused a strong reaction among Russian politicians and parliamentarians. Crimean Deputy Prime Minister Ruslan Balbek called Jamala's performance a dance on bones. Deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Vitaly Milonov spoke of the song as a provocation on the part of Ukraine. The first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Vadim Dengin, expressed the hope that the Eurovision leadership will not allow the song into the competition.
When strangers come
They come to your house
They're killing you all
And they say: “we are not to blame.”
Where is your mind?
Humanity is crying.
You think you're gods
But everyone is mortal.
I didn't grow up here.
We could build a future
Where people would be free
To live and love.
The happiest time.
Where is your heart?
Humanity is rising.
You think you're gods
But everyone is mortal.
Don't swallow my soul, our souls.
I'm not satisfied with my youth,
I didn't grow up here.
I couldn’t get enough of my homeland.
Jamala has not been to Crimea, where her parents live, for two years (“my arrival there could be used against me”). Near-political scandals do not please her. The singer says that the audience from Petrozavodsk, Samara and other Russian cities who come to her concerts are “even closer to her than the Ukrainians.”
The second semi-final of the Eurovision music competition took place in Stockholm. Ukrainian singer Jamala showed her number - bookmakers call her the main competitor of Sergei Lazarev in the fight for first place. “Lenta.ru” talks about Jamal and her song “1944”, the most discussed at the competition.
Jamala (Susanna Jamaladdinova) has been studying music since early childhood. She is 32 years old, she was born in Osh (Kyrgyzstan), where her great-grandmother was deported during the deportation of the Tatars from Crimea. My great-grandfather and all the men on my grandmother’s side died at the front. Her father is Tatar, her mother is Armenian.
In 1989, Susanna’s family managed to return to Crimea, to the village of Malorechenskoye (formerly Kuchuk-Uzen), where their ancestors lived. It took six years to buy a house and move the family. It was impossible to find someone who would agree to sell the house to returning Crimean Tatars, so the mother, whose nationality did not raise suspicions, was in charge of the purchase. The parents even had to temporarily divorce in order to clean out the “Tatar trace” in the mother’s documents. According to the singer, it was morally very difficult to decide to take such a step.
Susanna graduated with honors from the National Academy of Music named after P.I. Tchaikovsky in Kyiv in opera vocal class, but preferred pop music to a career as an opera singer.
Fame came to her in 2009 after winning the “New Wave” competition for young performers in Jurmala - Jamala was awarded the Grand Prix. In 2011, her first English-language album For Every Heart was released. At the same time, the singer makes her first attempt to get to Eurovision. According to her, she was supposed to win the Ukrainian qualifying competition, but did not make it due to judicial fraud.
Five years later, having released four albums, Jamala tried again. She composed the song “1944” about two years ago for the album “Podikh” (2015), but this song was too different from the rest of the material in sound and mood, and was not included in the album.
The lyrics of the song are quite abstract, but according to Jamala, it is based on the story of her great-grandmother Nazylkhan, who was deported to Central Asia in 1944 with five small children in her arms. My great-grandfather fought in the Red Army at that time. Nazylkhan's little daughter Aishe died on the way. The soldiers accompanying the train did not allow the child to be buried and threw him onto the side of the road like garbage.
The news that Ukraine will go to Eurovision with a song about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars caused a strong reaction among Russian politicians and parliamentarians. Crimean Deputy Prime Minister Ruslan Balbek called Jamala's performance a dance on bones. Deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Vitaly Milonov spoke of the song as a provocation on the part of Ukraine. The first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Vadim Dengin, expressed the hope that the Eurovision leadership will not allow the song into the competition.
Video: STB TV channel
When strangers come
They come to your house
They're killing you all
And they say: “we are not to blame.”
Where is your mind?
Humanity is crying.
You think you're gods
But everyone is mortal.
I didn't grow up here.
We could build a future
Where people would be free
To live and love.
The happiest time.
Where is your heart?
Humanity is rising.
You think you're gods
But everyone is mortal.
Don't swallow my soul, our souls.
I'm not satisfied with my youth,
I didn't grow up here.
I couldn’t get enough of my homeland.
Jamala has not been to Crimea, where her parents live, for two years (“my arrival there could be used against me”). Near-political scandals do not please her. The singer says that the audience from Petrozavodsk, Samara and other Russian cities who come to her concerts are “even closer to her than the Ukrainians.”
Video: Jamala | Jamala / YouTube
London, May 20. Edition published in London in Bulgarian Bulgarian times reported that the Eurovision winner with the song “1944” Jamala was a boy named Abdulkhair at her birth on August 27, 1983 in the Kyrgyz city of Osh. She changed her gender after surgery in 2006 and became Susanna Jamaladinova. As proof, the publishing house publishes a photograph in which a secondary feature left over from her male past is clearly visible - the Adam's apple, the Adam's apple.
Regarding her victory, the publication writes that, in principle, there is nothing new in this, because in 2014 the Eurovision was won by an Austrian Thomas Neuwirth, better known as the bearded woman Conchita Wurst.
In his other articles Bulgarian times informs its readers about the singer’s grandfather, who served the Germans in one of the ten Crimean Tatar battalions formed by the Germans. It is especially emphasized that they were formed exclusively by volunteers. In April-May 1944, they entered into battle with units Soviet army who liberated Crimea from the Nazis. The defeated remnants of these battalions flee from Crimea, but do not stop fighting - the Tatar SS Mountain Jaeger Regiment under the command of SS Standartenführer Fortenbach was formed from their remnants. Its number was 2,500 Crimean Tatars.
The publication also notes that the deportation of 1944, which Jamal laments in his song, was far from the first in the history of the Crimean Tatar people. During the Crimean War, the Turks resettled part of the Crimean Tatars to Bulgaria, which was then part of Ottoman Empire. There they became famous for their predatory lifestyle and monstrous atrocities during the suppression of the Bulgarian uprisings. That is why, when Bulgaria was liberated by Russian troops in 1878, almost 100% of the Crimean Tatars fled to Turkey and the largest Crimean Tatar diaspora in the world, numbering about 150 thousand people, still lives there.
Obviously, if relations between the EU and Turkey continue to deteriorate, as is happening now, then Jamala has a real chance of winning Eurovision again. This time with the song “1856”.
If you look closely at Jamala’s biography, you can easily notice that she changed not only her gender, but also everything else. So, for example, initially she called herself a Tatar - it was easier to live in the USSR. Later she renamed herself Crimean Tatar. If necessary, she also called herself Armenian - according to her mother’s nationality.
Her relations with Russia are also interesting: she took part in the Usadba Jazz festivals three times in Moscow and St. Petersburg, took part in the celebration of Moscow City Day and even in a ceremony in memory of the attack on the USSR in Berlin.
Later she changed her views and starred in the film “The Guide,” which talks about repressions in the early 30s in the same USSR.
The film, without a doubt, is a striking example of modern Ukrainian cinema. He talks about how, on orders from Moscow, kobza bandura players are shot in Ukraine. The unfortunate kobzars are gathered in Kharkov for the Republican Congress of Singers folk song, and then, under the guise of being sent to the All-Union Congress in Moscow, they are loaded onto a train, taken to the forest and shot there. Stop Moscow's plans for destruction Ukrainian culture Ukraine's traditional friends - US citizens - are trying. The role of the Ukrainian singer Olga Levitskaya, the American’s lover, was entrusted to the real Ukrainian Jamala. Despite the fact that even the Ukrainian authorities announced that there was not a single document about this mythical execution, money was allocated for the filming. Moreover, in Kharkov region a monument to the non-existent victims of a fictitious execution was unveiled.
The film was shot before Euromaidan and the return of Crimea. Let us recall that the film “Unbroken”, glorifying the commander of Bandera’s army, Roman Shukhevych, was shot back in 2008. And in Crimea, in October 2011, in the village of Krasnokamenka, a ceremonial burial was held for a deserter from the Red Army, SS Obersturmführer Dengiza Dagci. All these facts indicate that Ukraine was confidently moving towards the creation of a nationalist state, regardless of Russia’s actions in Crimea.
In 2014, Jamala strongly condemned the decision of her compatriots to join Russia, and cried a lot about the fate of the unfortunate people suffering under the heel of the Russian occupiers. However, to celebrate 2015, she went specifically to the occupiers - to a corporate party at the Red Fox residence at Rosa Khutor near Sochi.
Obviously, singing there contributed to the improvement of her financial condition, although it did not correspond to the views she proclaimed.
Interesting changes have also occurred with Jamala's political views. In October 2009, she spoke at the Party of Regions congress, where she was nominated as a candidate for the presidency of Ukraine Victor Yanukovich. Later, in television program“The Truth of Roman Skrypnyk”, when asked by the presenter whether she would sing the song at a rally organized by President Yanukovych, she answered in the affirmative and stated that the elected president must be loved, as US citizens do in relation to their president.
However, in December 2013, she appeared at Euromaidan and announced that she supported all actions leading to the overthrow of President Yanukovych.
The Eurovision management was also unlucky with Jamala, who supported her claims that the winning song “1944” was not political. However, returning to Ukraine after the victory, Jamala said exactly the opposite. It is interesting that the Eurovision organizers did not react to this properly.
It becomes obvious that to win Eurovision you need to sing an anti-Russian song, to get Nobel Prize in literature, you need to write Russophobic works, and to receive the Nobel Peace Prize you only need to bomb five or six states.
In the final of the national selection on February 21, Ukrainians decided on the name of the artist who will represent the country at Eurovision 2016. 32-year-old Crimean Tatar Jamala won with the song “1944” about tragic fate of his people during the mass deportations organized by Stalin during the Second World War. Ukraine returns to the competition after being absent last year following the events on Maidan, the annexation of Crimea and the war in the east of the country.
The song “1944” was written by Jamala in two languages: English and Tatar. She talks about the biggest tragedy in the history of her people, the deportation, which the Tatars themselves call “surgyunlik”. The entire Tatar people, 200 thousand people, were deported from Crimea by order of Stalin under the pretext of collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. In terms of speed and scale, this deportation was unprecedented in the history of the Soviet regime, as it covered an entire nation. The operation involving 32,000 NKVD agents lasted two days, from May 18 to May 20, 1944. As the singer herself notes on Facebook, “last year I composed “1944,” a landmark composition for me. I was inspired to write it by the story of my great-grandmother Nazyl Khan about the tragedy that happened to our family and to the entire Crimean Tatar people in 1944. (….) Unfortunately, people still have not learned peaceful coexistence and tolerance. This is a very personal song for me, and I would really like the message it contains to be heard as much as possible. more people both in our country and abroad.”
Context
Eurovision and Jamala with political overtones
Sveriges Radio 02/24/2016“My home is Crimea”
Radio Liberty 02/13/2016The situation in Crimea raises concerns
Le Huffington Post 02/10/2016 Crimea (2 million inhabitants and 27,000 square kilometers of territory) was illegally annexed Russian Federation in March 2014, in violation of international agreements previously signed by Moscow. The most famous of them is the Budapest Memorandum, according to which Russia pledged to respect the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine and refrain from threats and the use of force against it. Neither the Ukrainian state nor the international community recognized Russia's annexation of the peninsula.Since the annexation, Russian authorities have daily harassed Crimean Tatars and other pro-Ukrainian activists. Searches in the premises of the Mejlis and in the houses of Tatars, as well as their frequent detentions, have become commonplace. The only TV channel of the Crimean Tatars, ATR, which openly called for a boycott of the referendum on joining Russia, stopped broadcasting on the peninsula in March last year. About 7,000 Tatars were forced to flee their historical homeland, while the leader of the Crimean Tatar people's movement, Mustafa Dzhemilev, and the Chairman of the Mejlis, Refat Chubarov, were banned from entering Crimea for five years.
The Tatars are the indigenous Crimean people, descendants of the Crimean Khanate founded in 1441. At the end of the 18th century, the Khanate was declared independent from the Omani Empire, and Catherine II's Russia quickly annexed its territory. In the following years, the Tatars became a minority due to the appearance of a large number of Russian peasants, who were offered profitable terms imperial authorities.
The song “1944” is not Jamala’s first composition about events in Ukraine over the past two centuries. On the first anniversary of the revolution in the winter of 2013, Jamala and the vocalist of the Ukrainian group “Boombox” recorded the song “Zliva”. In 2015, the Tatar singer recorded “The Way to Dodoma” about the annexation of Crimea by the Russian authorities. In one of her last interviews, she said: “I cannot remain silent when my people cry.” Jamal's parents and grandfather still live on the occupied peninsula.
She recently reported that Michel Legrand's team contacted her and offered to collaborate in the future.
Jamala's participation in Eurovision 2016 becomes another way for Ukraine to draw the attention of the international community to the illegal annexation of Crimea and the alarming situation with human rights on the peninsula. The State Duma of the Russian Federation has already condemned Jamala’s participation in the music competition.