Zemfira
| Zemfira | |
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Zemfira in 2009
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Zemfira Talgatovna Ramazanova |
| Born | 26 August 1976 |
| Origin | Ufa, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Genres | Rock, alternative rock, pop rock |
| Years active | 1998–present |
| Labels | REAL Records, Navigator Records |
| Website | Official site |
Zemfira, born Zemfira Talgatovna Ramazanova (Russian: Земфира Талгатовна Рамазанова, Tatar: Земфира Тәлгать кызы Рамазанова, Zemfira Tälğät qızı Ramazanova; born 26 August 1976 in Ufa, Bashkortostan) is a Russian rock musician. She has been performing since 1998 and has been popular in Russia and other former Soviet republics. To date Zemfira has sold over 3 million records.
An ethnic Volga Tatar, she was born in a typical middle-class family – her mother is a doctor, and her father a history teacher. At the age of 4, Zemfira became interested in music, entering a music school the following year (where she studied piano performance and voice) and writing her first song when she was seven years old. Her older brother Ramil introduced her to rock music, which became her real passion – she listened to Black Sabbath, Nazareth and Queen, learning to play the guitar. In the 7th grade, Zemfira split her time between music and basketball, becoming the captain of the Russian Girls’ Junior Basketball Team by 1990. She began to lose interest in classical music, preferring instead to hang out with friends in the streets of Ufa and covering songs by Russian rock groups such as Kino, Nautilus Pompilius and Aquarium (who reached the peak of their popularity in the early 1990s).
At the urging of her mother, Zemfira continued with piano studies and graduated music school with honors. In her last year of high school, basketball competed with school work, and the singer abandoned the sport in favour of music. She took the entrance exams for the Ufa College of Fine Arts and was admitted into the second year, studying vocal performance. During college, she performed jazz and rock and roll standards in various local bars and restaurants accompanied by her friend, saxophone player Vlad Kolchin. She graduated with honors, and in 1996 took a job as a sound engineer at the Ufa subsidiary of the radio station "Europe Plus".
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