Jamala

Known professionally as Jamala, Ukrainian singer, songwriter, and actress Susana Jamaladinova gained worldwide attention in 2016 upon claiming victory at that year’s Eurovision Song Contest. She entered the world in 1983 with a Crimean Tatar father and an Armenian mother, launching her vocal pursuits at age nine. Opera training at the Petro Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine preceded her realization that pop music constituted her genuine path. A string of singles began appearing in 2010, with the first marking the start of that run. For Every Heart arrived as her opening studio album in 2011, succeeded by All or Nothing in 2013 and Подих in 2015. The next year she stood for Ukraine at Eurovision, delivering the politically charged “1944,” a piece prompted by her great-grandmother’s loss of a daughter in the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. The win brought her the People’s Artist of Ukraine title, conferred by President Petro Poroshenko.