Already multi award-winning Zulya Kamalova can now add the ARIA Award for Best World Music Album among her accomplishments.
Her album 3 Nights again showcases Zulya's haunting voice that effortlessly evokes a vivid inner landscape and a relentless spirit to explore the world's sounds.
At the age of 9 Zulya was already performing Russian and Tatar songs. A native of Tatarstan-Udmurtia region of Central Russia, she also studied music and languages at university and decided to settle in Australia in 1991.
Her musical journeys have taken her as far as Brazil, Rajastan, Thelonious Monk, Edith Piaf and back to her beloved Russian and Tatar roots. Zulya's voice is particularly evocative when she sings the melodies of her native land that are inadvertently nuanced by the Slavic angst and melancholy pervading the Russian and Tatar cultures.
On 3 Nights she sings in three languages - English, Russian, and her native tongue, Tatar.
Zulya has cultivated a fruitful relationship with the Children of the Underground the band with which she also forged her last album The Waltz of Emptiness (and Other Songs on Russian Themes) .
When asked about the creative process and collaboration with the brilliant musicians in the band she told The Epoch Times : "We like to play with rhythms and not just use one particular kind. We use rhythms form various traditions but not just pick a style and duplicate it; we like to appropriate it and make it our own. I guess that's why people find our music interesting because we are not just copying, we are being creative and making something new."
Despite the eclectic and obscure sounds and nuances not just in the music but her own voice and language, it is easy to be drawn into the music and find a shared experience. She often travels back to Russia but calls Australia home and finds people here equally receptive to her music.
"It's interesting how, the people who migrated here from Europe and even their descendants who grew up in Australia, genetically they have the memory of their culture and I think that's why people respond to my music. Because somewhere deep inside it resonates with them, something stirs in them."
Zulya explains "I don't particularly expect that to happen as a musician, you just put whatever you have into your music but people find in it parts that resonate with them that you didn't intend at all. I serve as a channel and people respond to it in their particular way."
One thing is certain, it is impossible to remain unaffected by Zulya's voice and music that combined, form a new language which touches on a deeper level.
3 Nights released in April this year in Australia and May in Europe, has already spent at least four months in the top 10 of the European World Music Charts!
Currently Zulya and the Children of the Underground are about to finish their European tour and will be playing in Perth at the Kulture Carnivale on November 17 and in Melbourne at the Spiegel Tent on November 22.
Feeds