Kazakh singer to take part in Russian Voice

Binazir Yermaganbetova from Kazakhstan's Karaganda has qualified for Golos, a Russian version of internationally renowned The Voice, Tengrinews reports citing Noviy Vestnik. Kazakh singer will appear in TV episodes next year.

Binazir, 24 was born in the city of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan. She graduated from Karaganda State University with a major in law.

The young singer who goes under the stage name of BikaBreezy has no education in singing, but took dombyra classes (dombyra is a lute-like Kazakh national instrument) for 5 years and learned to play a guitar using Youtube video lessons.

Binazar said that the idea to take part in the singing contest came to her fairly long ago, but she followed it through only this year.

Before blind auditions, which is the first stage of Russian Voice that goes on TV, the participants have to pass a casting.

Binazar filed her application via the Internet, attaching her profile, photo and audio. After a while, a producer from Moscow invited her to take part in the casting in Moscow, where she had to compete with 13,000 other participants.

“We were divided into groups. 500-600 contestants were eliminated every day, but I was among the 2000 participants who were selected for the next stage by the jury panel. After that, there was another casting, but a more serious one. I prepared well and rehearsed a lot. But when I entered the stage, I forgot everything. We laughed at it and decided that I should sing a song that I had known for a long time. I chose Ne-Yo’s song,” Binazir said.

It was a good choice of a song, because all the jury members gave Binazir a yes, and she became one of the 146 participants who qualified for the next stage, which is the blind auditions. The Kazakh singer will appear in the blind audition TV episodes next year.

Earlier, another Kazakh singer Diana Sharapova qualified for blind auditions in Golos. The episodes with Diana will be aired in September's end this year.

Golos is a Russian version of internationally renowned The Voice that premiered in October 2012 on Russian Channel One. The winner of the first season Dina Garipova later represented Russia at Eurovision-2013. The second season was aired from September to December 2013. Sergei Volchkov was the winner of the second season.

The jurors are Russian folk singer Pelageya, Russian popular singers Leonid Agutin, Dima Bilan (runner-up of Eurovision-2006, winner of Eurovision-2008), and one of the first Russian rock singers Alexander Gradsky.

 Writing by Assel Satubaldina, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina