Sevara Nazarkhan

About

Biography

Sevara Nazarkhan, an Uzbek singer and songwriter, grew up in Tashkent. She sings in Uzbek, Russian and English and blends the folk and classical traditions of Uzbekistan with pop, soul and electronics. In 2004 she won a BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music. Her father sang European classics and headed the traditional music department at Tashkent radio. Sevara studied voice at the Tashkent State Conservatoire, joined a women's soul quartet in 1998, sang at the Taxi Blues arts cafe and released her first album a year later. In 2000 she flew to London for the WOMAD festival in Reading and took the stage in place of an artist who had cancelled. Peter Gabriel invited her to the Real World studio in Bath. The dutar, a two-stringed Central Asian lute, and the doira, a frame drum, form the core of her sound. On Yol Bolsin the master Toir Kuziyev played the dutar parts, and producer Hector Zazou added electric guitars, keyboards and samples. The repertoire goes back to the oral poetry of the region: folk, Sufi and peasant songs, among them "Adolat Tanovari" and "Alla." Sen rests on loops and rhythms, while Tortadur sounds sparer: dutar, tanbur, doira, nay flute and qanun zither. Yol Bolsin came out on Real World on 3 February 2003. Sevara co-produced Sen (30 June 2007) with Viktor Sologub and Bruno Ellingham, wrote most of the songs herself and took the lyrics from Uzbek poets. For Tortadur (2011) she recorded folk-classical songs with masters of traditional instruments and mixed them at Abbey Road. The album Pisma (2013) is in Russian, and she sang its title song with Vyacheslav Butusov. Sevara reached her first large halls on Peter Gabriel's Growing Up tour: according to her website, they played more than fifty concerts in Europe, the United States and Canada. On 21, 22 and 23 December 2019 she gave three concerts at the Humo Arena in Tashkent with a youth symphony orchestra conducted by Kamoliddin Urinboev and a choir. According to Afisha.uz, the first night drew almost ten thousand people, and a duet with Sherali Juraev closed the programme. In 2020 she released the singles "Esli by lyubov byla takoy" and "Lastochki." According to Afisha.uz, in July 2026 Sevara presented the seven-song album Friends of the Birds ("Druzya ptits") in Tashkent, among them "Topsam" and "Do'stlar." The title refers to a poem by Usman Azim. Her live programme draws on lyrical songs from different years, mostly in Uzbek with a few in Russian, and at the Humo Arena an orchestra played them with her.