If you want to get to know present-day Russia, you will sooner or later come across the phenomenon of Alsou. Singer Alsou Safina, 19, is an unusual happening in Russian pop music. In 2000, some two years after she had embarked on her singing career, she was voted the first runner-up at the 26th Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm with a song called "Solo" (none of Russian singers ever reached as far as that at Eurovision). Following her victory, she signed a long-term contract with Universal, a well-known Western record company. It seemed like her charm and the charm of her songs put a spell on people of all ages and wide sections of the population.
Her native Tatarstan, a Russian republic in the Volga area, holds Alsou for a national heroine. The unusual (for a Westerner) name Alsou translates from the Tatar language as "pink water." For her tribesmen in Russia, the Moslem Alsou is a leading light, the first national pop singer who reached the top of Russian and European charts.
Yet another feature of Alsou is that, according to public opinion polls, she is the world's most beautiful woman alongside actress/TV anchorwoman Yulia Menshova. Indeed, Alsou Safina could model or participate in international beauty pageants if she chose to, but as it happens they don't interest her. She goes to the Russian Academy of Dramatic Art, gives solo performances in Russia's best venues, presents excellent videos to her songs, and takes all of her professional efforts with the utmost seriousness.
There are of course sceptics who will say the girl has a weak and not very expressive voice. But then, each sceptic is counterbalanced to ten opponents, all firmly convinced that despite the weak voice, the girl sings with her heart and does everything she can to get better and better from song to song, from one concert to another.
Alsou's trump cards are the image of a young beauty, a delicate voice, melodic traditional songs, and touching subjects of her songs. "We didn't know we were making a real family singer," confesses Vadim Belotserkovsky, Alsou's producer. "Her concerts attract everyone from teenagers to pensioners." Symbolically, her career began with a family event too: she was asked to sing at her brother's wedding, and the guests enjoyed the debut immensely.
It's no secret that Alsou's path towards a singing career was shorter that it could have been thanks to her father, Ralif Safin, who used to be the Vice President of Russia's major oil company, Lukoil. Tatarstan, the native land of Aslou and her family, is a rich oil region. Today, Ralif Safin is a member of the upper house of the Russian parliament.
Alsou's real debut, in a video for a song called "Wintertime Dream," which was constantly aired on Russia's biggest TV channel, ORT, was remarkable not just because of the singer's talents, and not because the video had a ring of Nabokov's "Lolita." Not every beginner on the pop scene can afford to make a video starring such famous Russian actors as Sergei Makovetsky and Yelena Yakovleva; not every singer can shoot a video in a country cottage that used to belong to the most popular pair in Soviet cinematography, Grigory Alexandrov and Lyubov Orlova; and not every performer can make a video with the help of Russia's best video producers.
Support of an influential and rich father, however, does not discredit Alsou or depreciate the ardent love that her fans feel for her. The young beautiful singer is modest, well-mannered, democratic and easy to deal with, capable of working without looking back on her father, and so far devoid of any features of the star disease.
Coming to her native Tatarstan for her 17th birthday, Alsou walked around with a kerchief on her head and visited the mosque just like a real Moslem. In the Tatar town of Bugulma, she gave a concert for her fellow countrymen, which attracted 80,000 people (Bugulma is a town of 100,000). It was announced during the concert that Tatar President Mintimer Shaimiyev had conferred on the 17-year-old Alsou the title of an Honoured Artist of the republic (that is a Russian decoration for prominent cultural workers).
As a small child, Alsou lived in Russia and moved from one town to another together with her father, an oil industry worker, and her family. As a ten-year-old, she travelled to England and entered an artistic college. Today, she confesses that England provided her with good secondary education, a good knowledge of English in the first place. Now that she lives in Russia, she complains of having too little knowledge of history and Russian literature ("I'm ashamed I don't really know Russian literature"), but she tries to repair her omission as far as the Russian and Tatar languages are concerned.
It is possible that under different circumstances, Alsou could have remained abroad forever. After all, according to newspapers, she knows English better than she knows Russian. At a press conference that followed the aforementioned Eurovision Song Contest, she had to prove she could actually speak Russian. And still, she will hardly be able to ever find such loving, faithful fans outside Russia.
In November 2002, Alsou gave solo concerts in three of Moscow's best venues. Spectators were ecstatic about all the three.

Raisa ZUBOVA